The Jam Maker

The Jam Maker is the third historical fiction novel by Mary-Lou Stephens set in Tasmania. Twelve year old Harriet Brown is forced to pretend that she is a boy in order to work as a label-paster at George Peacock & Sons jam factory in Hobart. Her family needs her wage to survive. At the factory she is befriended by twelve year old Henry Jones. 

When she turns sixteen, Harriet, known as Harry in the factory, decides that she has had enough and leaves her job, much to the disapproval of her mother who promptly organises an arranged marriage for her daughter. Harriet's parents have misled her new husband into believing that she is an expert jam maker who will be an asset to his small jam making enterprise. 

Fortunately Harriet is willing to learn all she can about jam making and eventually helps her husband's business to expand. Meanwhile Henry Jones' career is progressing as he takes on higher positions in the jam making business. Henry marries Alice who becomes a friend of Harriet.

The novel follows Harriet's progress as a jam maker and the success of Sprouts Jams as she and Ruth experiment with making specialist jams with flavours not available elsewhere. However when her husband dies Harriet's life involves challenges she had not anticipated.

The Jam Maker, set in the years from 1874 to 1926, covers a range of events and issues affecting life in Tasmania including the economic depression of the 1890s, trade tariffs, the Boer War, Federation, The First World War and the rights of women to be financially independent. The novel is also the story of the development of the firm IXL - the firm developed by Henry Jones.

However this work of historical fiction is also the story of a determined woman fighting for the life and recognition that she wants for herself and her family. The book also interweaves references to the author's to previous historical novels - The Last of the Apple Blossom and The Chocolate Factory.

Sir Henry Jones - Australian Dictionary of Biography 

Henry Jones IXL - Wikipedia 

The Chocolate Factory

The English chocolate factory, Cadbury, opened its first overseas factory at Claremont, near Hobart. The factory was built on a 246 acre property on a peninsula where there was cheap hydroelectricity. The new factory was officially opened in October 1921. Sixteen women from the Cadbury factory at Bournville came to Australia to help train Australian women in the processes for making chocolate. Several years earlier the Cadbury factory had formed partnerships with Fry's and Pascals confectionery companies in the UK. The name of the firm was now Cadbury-Fry-Pascal.

Mary-Lou Stephens has written a historical fiction novel, The chocolate factory, about the early years of the establishment of the factory at Claremont. In the novel Dorothy Adwell, a war widow, travels to Tasmania from England to be a foreman in the new factory with the responsibility of ensuring that the enrober machines worked efficiently. Eventually staff will be housed in a village constructed on the Cadbury site, but initially Dorothy stays in a boarding house with other women from England who also work in the factory.

On the voyage to Australia Dot meets Thomas, a returned serviceman who is struggling with PTSD. Dot is aware of the condition as her husband, Freddie, also struggled with PTSD before he died. Dot recognises Thomas' symptoms and endeavours to help him.

Maisie Greenwood is the eldest daughter of a war widow who tries to support the family by taking in mending and ironing. She lives in Hobart, a half hour train ride from Claremont. When Maisie starts working at the Cadbury factory she hopes to be able to earn enough money to support her mother and keep her sister, Lily, at school.

The novel follows the lives of the women as they adjust to their new roles at the Cadbury factory. However it is soon apparent that there are attempts to sabotage the success of the new enterprise.

The author covers many historical themes in this novel including the workings of the chocolate factory, the philosophy of the factory owners who are Quakers, the effects of war on ex-servicemen as well as on war-widows and their families, working conditions for women in the 1920s, as well as themes of friendship, trust, industrial espionage. It is an interesting book to read, especially when dealing with the lives of the women working at the new factory however I felt that the author was attempting to include too many themes in the book which, although interesting, sometimes meandered from the main story and distracted from the flow of the main story. I did finish reading the novel but at one stage I was tempted to look for something else to read.