THE BISHOP'S WIFE

An erotic novel of love and religion in the Caribbean.
Christine (Caribbean Love Affair, 2014) brings readers into the passionate world of Tricia Dessington, the wife of Elias, the bishop of Calvary Isle, a tightknit community off the coast of Grenada. Tricia and Elias seem to be deeply in love, but Tricia’s intense sexual appetites are quietly tearing their happy life apart. She’s secretly begun seeking satisfaction outside of her marriage, and although these encounters are sexually fulfilling, they wreak havoc on her emotional and spiritual well-being (“Her heart felt heavy again; she felt like she was a total disappointment to God. But what was she to do? How do you suppress these types of feelings?”). When Roger Duncan, an old flame from Tricia’s past, returns to the island, she finds her loyalties torn, and soon her sexual infidelities threaten to come to light. Christianity plays a large part in this story, with questions about faith, sin, temptation and trust in God interwoven with lushly descriptive sex scenes. This makes for an original novel, but it’s uncertain who its audience is intended to be, and its ultimate message is unclear. Overall, the book seems to suffer from an identity crisis. There’s a certain amount of moralizing in awkward lines such as, “Searching for love in all the wrong places, Roger had gone about his worthless activities trying to prove that he was wanted,” and judgmental descriptions of Tricia’s passions sit by side with more steamy scenes, leaving the book stranded somewhere between erotica and Christian fiction. The story also confusingly jumps back and forth in time with lengthy expositional passages, and its sudden ending is somewhat incongruous. However, the book’s rich setting and distinct, multidimensional characters are certain to draw readers in, and those looking for a thoughtful, complex erotic thrill will find plenty to sink their teeth into.
A descriptive and dramatic, if somewhat disjointed, tale of infidelity.