TANGLED DREAMS

In Friedman’s novel, a cultural anthropology professor at a crossroads receives a grant that draws her back into her Caribbean past.

It’s the end of her 23rd year in academia, and Dr. Jocelyn Kendall, a cultural anthropology professor, has been denied a promotion. Single and disappointed in her career, she appears headed toward a burnout-induced retirement. In a Boston hotel room, she hears her dead mother’s voice: “When I said marriage is not for you, I had my reasons.” Jocelyn’s mother died three years earlier; they had a rocky relationship that began when Jocelyn was sent to live with her grandmother in Bequia, a small island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. After moving back with her mother at the age of 5, she never saw her grandmother again. A grant to study the connection between Boston’s and Bequia’s whaling communities offers Jocelyn both a professional reprieve and an opportunity to reconnect with her past. A past life regression sends her deeper into familial memory—as Jocelyn slips into the life of her great-great-grandmother, Mariel, who married a Portuguese sailor on the island, the narrative layers romance and danger, and questions what we inherit from the past. Dr. Gerald Hunter, a Boston curator with his own ties to the island, provides a present-day romantic possibility, though the emotional core lies in the blurring of the timelines and the women’s identities. Friedman’s prose is fluid, moving from sensual moments (“His touch was ever so light…his kisses were artful, arousing”) to tense and action-packed scenes (“He is planning to kill me!…I was Mariel yet again”). This fluidity extends to the timeline itself, and the delicious moments when the past and present merge into a state somewhere in between are a true treat to become immersed in.

A fantastic example of ancestry-driven fiction.