The Cartographer's Secret

September 13, 2021
A young woman investigates her family’s role in a decades-old mystery in Australian writer Cooper’s moving latest (after The Girl in the Painting). In 1911, 25-year-old Lettie Rawlings’s older brother, Thorne, dies in a boating accident. Lettie’s mother, Miriam, sends her from Sydney to the family’s horse-breeding estate to tell her great-aunt Olivia that she is now the estate’s rightful heir, which Olivia disputes. Though despondent over Thorne’s death, Lettie gets swept up in uncovering both what happened to her aunt Evie Ludgrove, who went missing nearly 20 years ago, as well as the disappearance decades earlier of real-life explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, which had obsessed her late grandfather. Since Olivia and Miriam are estranged, Olivia is initially wary of Lettie’s surprise visit, but they become close as Lettie’s research uncovers Evie’s possible fate, and Lettie makes no claim on the estate. An 1880 narrative follows Evie, a gifted artist and promising mapmaker, who shares her father’s preoccupation with Leichhardt; when a large reward is offered for proof of where Leichhardt died, Evie is determined to claim the reward for the cash-strapped farm, but she vanishes while pursuing a lead. Cooper gets to the heart of a family’s old wounds, puzzles, and obsessions, while providing a luscious historical rendering of the landscape. This layered family saga will keep readers turning the pages.

November 1, 2021
Evie Ludgrove inherited her father's desire to figure out what happened to disappeared explorer Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt. Evie, a great artist and mapmaker already, is delighted when her father asks her to work with him on a book about Leichhardt. Evie's passion for this project prompts her to take a trip--one from which she never returns. Thirty years later, Evie's niece Letitia Rawlings is trying to cope with the sudden loss of her older brother, Thorne. Traveling to the family property at Yellow Rock to tell her great-aunt Olivia about Thorne's death, city girl Letitia is surprised to see how much she likes this more rural part of Australia. Soon Letitia is as obsessed with finding out what happened to Evie as Evie was with Leichhardt. Shifting perspectives from Evie in 1880 to Letitia in 1911, Cooper paints a fascinating portrait of two women rebelling in their own ways against the expectations society and their family have for them. Historical-fiction fans will delight in this romantic tale of family and long-held secrets.

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December 3, 2021

After the unexpected death of her brother Thorne, Lettie Rawlings seeks to escape her grief and her mother's ambitions when she agrees to visit her great-aunt Olivia in the Hunter Valley of Australia. Setting out in Thorne's Model T, Lettie arrives at Olivia's horse farm, where she finds a feisty, capable woman and a house full of family secrets. Apparently Lettie resembles Evie Ludgrove, her aunt who disappeared decades earlier. Evie and her father were obsessed with explorer Dr. Ludwig Liechhardt, who also disappeared into the Australian bush. Compelled to discover what happened to Evie, Lettie delves into her grandfather's papers and finds a beautifully drawn map that Evie created. Following a clue from the map takes Lettie on another journey across the valley and also into the arms of Nathaniel Poole. As they piece together what might have happened to Evie, Lettie begins to feel at home on the farm and envisions a new future for herself. VERDICT Alternating between Lettie's story in 1911 and Evie's story in 1880, Cooper's (The Girl in the Painting) engrossing novel offers up several strong female characters with an intriguing mystery and a bit of romance in a gorgeous, yet harsh Australian setting.--Melissa DeWild, Comstock Park, MI

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