CARIBBEE

by Thomas Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 25, 1985

Set mainly on the island of Barbados during the middle of the 17th century, Hoover's second novel (his first, The Moghul, 1983, was another historical) tells the tale of that island colony's Puritan settlers' aborted attempt to wrest political and economic independence from England. Having stolen the secrets of sugar-making from the Portuguese, and relying on the newly introduced abomination of African slavery, the major landowners of Barbados, led by one Benjamin Briggs, look forward to the accumulation of vast personal wealth. When Oliver Cromwell, newly anointed Lord Protector of England, sends the British Navy to impose his Navigation Acts on the colonists, forbidding them to trade with any country but England and thereby severely curtailing their potential profits, the landowners--some of them animated as much by royalist detestation of Cromwell as by the profit motive--determine to fight the military invasion and declare autonomy in matters of trade and governance. Aided by the novel's hero, Hugh Winston, an exiled English aristocrat and sometime buccaneer, they repel Cromwell's troops for a time, but are within a matter of weeks subdued, as much by dissension and chicanery among their own ranks as by superior firepower on the part of the British. In the midst of the melee between the mother colony and her insurrectionist subjects, a group of African slaves, led by the noble warrior, Atiba, attempt their own rebellion, which is swiftly and brutally put down by the landowners. As the cause of beating back the British grows hopeless, with the colonists more and more breaking ranks and attempting to strike separate compromises of their own, Winston and his lover, the governor's daughter Katherine Bedford, Winston's loyal crew, and the slave Atiba, who has eluded his incensed ""master,"" escape Barbados and make their way to Jamaica. There, an attempt to seize this island from the occupying Spanish is partially successful, and the ""freedom fighters,"" 17th-century style, establish a haphazard but workable pocket of liberty in the increasingly English-dominated Caribbean. Meticulous if somewhat tendentious in its presentation of historical material, and compelling in the matter of slavery and violated African cultures, this nonetheless lacks the imaginative power needed to carry its personal dramas along. As a work of fiction, the book simply never catches fire, and despite all the care that obviously went into it, it is very heavy going indeed.

Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1985

ISBN: 1611790700

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1985

Categories: FICTION