From the blurb: Sint Marteen 1855. Privileged young Pieter may have grown up on a sugar cane plantation, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with the way his father runs things. He falls in love with Joss, one of his father’s slaves, and their affair sets off a chain of events that is destined to tear them apart. When Pieter’s father dies, he returns home hoping to find Joss. It’s too late for their love, but maybe it’s not too late for Pieter to find happiness. As he makes his way to America, Pieter realizes old conflicts still rage, and even as he finds a new love, danger stalks his every move. Can Pieter learn to overcome the hate and fear that threaten to tear his world apart?
Review by Erastes
I received a jolt right at the beginning of this book, and it set me on edge. It worried me almost immediately about the research, but in the end I shouldn’t have worried. Pieter’s family’s plantation’s name – Spinnaker- probably sounded Dutch to the author, but the term (for a sail) wasn’t coined until the latter part of the 19th century, and therefore couldn’t have been the name of a tulip in the 1600’s!
However this is just about the only gaffe that I spotted. I did wonder briefly why the slaves on Spinnaker didn’t leg it to the French side of the island – or at least wondered why there wasn’t mention of that – seeing as how the French had abolished slavery some 7 years previously, but maybe they had their reasons.
It’s an intriguing premise and Woods has obviously done a ton of research about Sint Maarten, sugarcane and the Dutch trade, and that shows. There’s rather a little too much history at the beginning of the book – which follows on from the very opening scene, a sex-scene between Pieter and Joss and pulls you away from a erotic beginning into HISTORY! Then the time-line jumps back and forth and is a little disruptive, and in fact (as far as I can see, from just one reading) goes wrong at one point, and Pieter goes from being nearly 21 to 25 years old in only 2 years.
Pieter’s complete ignorance of his surroundings, and the workings of the plantation, relationships of the slaves struck me as rather implausible. He’s about 12 before he starts asking questions, and .. well… that just didn’t ring very true. He doesn’t seem to have a tutor, and I’d imagine that his father would have had him learning the business (as an only son) pretty early on. He has, however to become an abolitionist so I suppose this might have been necessary. What struck me, too, is that the voices were all so similar. You had a Dutch-Caribbean young man who’d never been off the island, a young negro slave, an American plantation owner from Louisiana and so on, but they all spoke identically. I’m not saying that I want phonetic representations of accents, but I’d like to have seen some differentiation here and there.
I did like the way that the author showed the reasons why some plantation owners could not follow the abolitionist route, but I did find it ironic that, for all Pieter’s talk and attempts to convince Sebastian of his views, he still owned slaves in St Marteen, even if they did run the plantation themselves.
The conflict takes a while to kick in, and everything is bit laboured for the first half of the book – particularly the episode back in Holland where nothing much happens except to introduce Cane himself – but when it does it relies heavily on not only one major coincidence but two, which was a bit much to swallow. The reintroduction of previous characters could have been done a little more elegantly.
The thing is, that I did enjoy this book – I appreciated the work that the author had put into it, and I liked the set up at the end which screams sequel. If there is one, I’ll definitely be buying it, but there were too many reasons that stopped this from being a book which, with a few tweaks, was one that would have easily earned five stars.
eta: The author correctly corrects me and advises me that there was a tulip called Spinnaker, so bad Erastes. Also that she had addressed the matter of the Dutch slaves fleeing to the French side of the island but that came out in the editing.
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Filed under: 19th Century, Fiction, Reviews, three stars
I read your review with interest and am glad that you did like the story, even though you found some faults. I would like first to address an error in your first para – in which you got a ‘jolt’. I understand that you considered I perhaps put too much of my research into the story but I can assure you that all of it *was* accurate.
There was indeed a tulip named Spinnaker long before the word was used in the naval sense, the flower was in fact first grown in 1620 – I can provide you with a picture drawn around that time if you wish. The name has nothing at all to do with its later connotation; it is in fact derived from the Dutch word for spider, another name for the flower is the spider head tulip.
There are other comments I could address but as with any review, the opinion is subjective and perhaps I should not go into that kind of detail.
I really wanted to correct something that gave me a ‘jolt’ in return, and to also let you know that indeed there will be a sequel; it is written and has been accepted for publication, its release due in January 2009.
Stevie
I’m very pleased there will be a sequel, and thanks for pointing out the Spinnaker thing, I should have looked a little further, but this is how we learn! Thanks!
Thanks, Erastes, for adding the note concerning the correction
Stevie