GHOSTS OF SAINT-PIERRE

In this novel, past and present vie for space in the tortured mind of a man plagued by guilt and grief over the tragic losses he suffered after a volcanic eruption destroyed much of Martinique in 1902.

Poncy explains in an opening disclaimer that although the story’s protagonist, Paul Poncy, was his grandfather and most of the characters in this book—written with McLean—were “real” people, the tale is fictitious. More accurately, the story is a mystical fantasy within a historical novel with the rudimentary framework of a biography, populated by engaging characters and a plethora of spirits who insist on participating in Paul’s earthly life. Readers meet Paul in 1918, living in America with his wife, Clara, and his second set of children. He is mentally wandering the halls of his grandmother’s villa in Martinique’s vacation area of Rivière Montauban, where he spent summers as a child. The villa is now long gone, but Paul has filled its phantom rooms with the ghosts of his lost first family, including his first kids. The shock of losing his oldest American son, Francis Paul, to the Spanish flu has sent him back into the fog of his memories to the home he left behind in 1899. Here, the authors introduce a running fantasy within the intricate, melancholy novel—the imaginary adventures of little Yvonne. It is a story Paul has created for his American child Theresa, but in fact it is a tale he is spinning for himself about the infant daughter he left behind. Like his meanderings through his grandmother’s villa, the Yvonne fantasy is a construct to combat the trauma of loss that never leaves him. This is an intriguing, albeit initially confusing, narrative change-up, followed by a jump back in time to Paul’s final years in Martinique, the colorful, romantic setting of the engrossing book’s first half. An inquisitive Paul, a son of wealth and White privilege, is wrestling with theological, political, and societal questions. And then he falls in love and has two children with Stéphanie Grainau, a beautiful biracial woman. Ultimately, this shrewd blend of fantasy and historical fiction proves to be unpredictable and moving.

A poignant, challenging, and clever ghost story with a few surprises.