Cezair-Thompson, author of The True History of Paradise and a creative writing instructor at Wellesley College, brings a smart, lilting voice and a sharp, quirky perspective to a tried-and-true literary formula, the sweeping historical epic. By taking the classic question familiar to all storytellers—"What if?"—and marrying it to the classic advice of fiction-writing teachers—"Write what you know"—Cezair-Thompson unravels a surprising yarn that is rich, salty and ultimately satisfying…Beyond the Hollywood stardust that floats over the proceedings, it is Cezair-Thompson's deft evocation of the beauty and unpredictability of Jamaica, its topography and its people, that raises The Pirate's Daughter to a level far above the bodice-ripping historic epic.
—The Washington Post
Pirate's Daughter
Narrated by Robin Miles
Margaret Cezair-ThompsonUnabridged — 15 hours, 1 minutes
Pirate's Daughter
Narrated by Robin Miles
Margaret Cezair-ThompsonUnabridged — 15 hours, 1 minutes
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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Cezair-Thompson conjures the tragic glamour of golden age Hollywood against the backdrop of lusty, turbulent Jamaica in her dual generational coming-of-age saga. Ida Joseph is 13 years old when Errol Flynn is nearly shipwrecked off the coast of her hometown of Port Antonio in 1946. Flynn instantly loves Jamaica and, eager to find a refuge from stateside scandal, purchases an island across from the port. Navy Island becomes the setting for his glittering parties, movie projects and affair with Ida in her senior year of high school. Flynn refuses to take responsibility for the resulting child, May, and after trying to make a go of it in Jamaica, Ida leaves May and heads to New York City, where she marries a wealthy baron friend of Flynn's who purchases the island after Flynn dies. May grows to adulthood on Navy Island, develops something more than a crush on a married family friend 40 years her senior and indulges in drugs and free love. Jamaica's tumultuous progression toward self-governance-with the violent chaos it unleashes on Navy Island-reveals certain hidden truths about the baron. For all the high drama, the reader never feels fully privy to Ida or May, but Cezair-Thompson otherwise succeeds magnificently in evoking a world distant in both time and place. (Oct.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationIn the late 1940s, Errol Flynn established a home on Navy Island, off the coast of Jamaica. What little is known of this aspect of Flynn's life is the springboard for Cezair-Thompson's fictional account. Told from the perspective of Ida, the young island girl Flynn seduces, and May, the product of their affair, this sprawling story traces the evolution of Jamaica from a British colony through the violence and political upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. The story is mesmerizing in the first half and loses focus in the second. Fatally flawed as Flynn is, some of the lifeblood of the story is sapped once he dies. The drawn-out conclusion involving the mysterious Austrian Baron Ida eventually marries fails to captivate, partly because the character is such a cipher. Nevertheless, many readers will be pulled into the depiction of the evolving and multiethnic Jamaican culture and the issues of identity the novel raises. Recommended for public libraries.
—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman
Adult/High School
"This is a story that could only have taken place in the tropics, where the climate draws sea rovers, pirates, and desperadoes from all corners of the world." These are the first words of the novel that May Josephine Flynn, the pirate's daughter, writes, and they are true of Cezair-Thompson's novel as well. Set in the West Indies, it is a paean to Jamaica and her people. A fictional love story, the book is peppered with references to real people and events, set against a backdrop of the social and cultural upheaval of an emerging nation, pirate treasure, and old Hollywood excess. It spans 30 years in the lives of one family. Readers follow Ida Joseph, a girl barely in her teens, whose life is changed radically when Errol Flynn is shipwrecked off Jamaica. She falls in love with him and has his child, May. Ida's pining for Flynn shapes her life, but May's yearning is for family and her own rightful place in the world. This is a lush, lovely fairy tale filled with obvious love for the characters, history, and place, rendered in faultless prose and patois. The feel of this novel is of Gone with the Wind in Jamaica instead of the old South, full to the bursting with romantic adventure and epic scope.
—Dana Cobern-KullmanCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
“Cezair-Thompson has spun a book-club-ready saga with two gorgeous women at its center—Ida, a light-skinned local girl who has a tryst with Flynn, and May, the daughter of that brief union. Flynn never acknowledges paternity, leaving Ida and May to forge a place for themselves in a land where they belong to neither the wealthy class of expatriates, nor the emerging black majority…[the book has] a knockout ending that reveals treasure buried beneath sand-encrusted secrets.”—People Magazine, Critic’s Choice
“With just enough swagger left in him to set island hearts aflutter, [Flynn] embarks on an affair with a young mixed-race girl coming of age, which, set against Jamaica’s own progression toward self-governance, makes for an unabashedly frangipani-scented—and wholly satisfying—armchair holiday of a read.”—Vogue
“The novel never stops for breath once…[it] just buzzes along, with years flying by between chapters, and dozens of characters entering and exiting, saying interesting things and doing outrageous ones. These characters range from aristocratic Europeans to desperately poor Jamaicans, and they are constantly pairing off in the most surprising ways.”—O Magazine
“[Cezair-Thompson] explores questions about identity and racism without being heavy-handed about it. She's best at juxtaposing Flynn's imported glamour with the realities of Jamaica and at suggesting there's more than one kind of buried treasure…The Pirate's Daughter offers plenty of serious passion and escape.”—USA Today
“Cezair-Thompson…brings a smart, lilting voice and a sharp, quirky perspective to a tried-and-true literary formula, the sweeping historical epic….Cezair-Thompson unravels a surprising yarn that is rich, salty and ultimately satisfying…[It’s her] deft evocation of the beauty and unpredictability of Jamaica, its topography and its people, that raises "The Pirate's Daughter" to a level far above the bodice-ripping historic epic.”
—The Washington Post
“Provides the kind of full-bodied yarn ideal for readers looking to be swept away.” —The Christian Science Monitor
"A ripe romantic novel…a mélange of family saga, love story, and political-historical fiction served up in a tropical setting."—The Boston Globe
“The Pirate's Daughter captures perfectly the essence of Jamaica, from the lilting patois spoken by its people to the lush beauty of its mountains and coves. If you have traveled there, you will certainly recognize the place, though this book will make you more intimate with its contradictions. Ms. Cezair-Thompson presents its racial and economic tensions, as well as its romance.”—The Dallas Morning News
“Cezair-Thompson makes use of a little-known bit of 20th-century popular history as a fulcrum to jimmy her way into the intricate themes of race, color, politics, fame and class in her native Jamaica…The Pirate's Daughter is the best kind of middle-brow fiction, neither pandering nor elitist, and not least of its charms is the desire to visit Jamaica that it will inspire in many of its readers.”—The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
"Cezair-Thompson promises her readers a "tropical adventure." She evokes spectacular shipwrecks and deserted islands, infamous buccaneers and glamorous celebrities. And the story that follows makes good on these promises. The novel fictionalizes an episode in the life of Errol Flynn, the scandal plagued, womanizing movie star whose sailboat capsized off the coast of Jamaica during a hurricane in 1946. Beginning with this very real drama, Cezair-Thompson tells the tale of two imagined women: a beautiful Jamaican teenager Flynn seduces during his time on the island and the daughter she bears him but whom he never cares to know.”—The New York Times Book Review
Swashbuckling matinee idol Errol Flynn finds respite and a haven from his most recent Stateside scandal in Jamaica in the mid-1940s. There he continues his "wicked, wicked ways" with Ida, a biracial teenaged girl who is besotted with the movie star. The result of their union is May—beautiful, feisty, and determined to find her place in the world. Robin Miles offers a flawless performance in this well-crafted combination of history, romance, and political upheaval. Miles flattens her lovely speaking voice in an eerie representation of Flynn, produces plummy British and harsh German inflections, and clips her tones to accommodate various classes of islanders. She creates a precise portrayal of Flynn-era decadence, a young girl's coming-of-age, and the turmoil and brutality of Jamaican politics in the '70s. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170528455 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
| Publication date: | 08/22/2008 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
the Pirate's Daughter
By margaret cezair-thompson
UNBRIDLED BOOKS
Copyright © 2007 Margaret Cezair-ThompsonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-932961-40-9
Chapter One
shipwrecked
If her father had not been a justice of the peace, Ida might never have come to know the movie star.
On a sunny morning in 1946, Ida Joseph stood outside her house in Port Antonio, leaning against her father's car. She was glad to be thirteen because it meant the end of childhood and the beginning of womanly responsibilities like picking out her own shoes. Her shoes that day were white and went well, she thought, with her pink-and-white dress. It was good to be outside after three days of rain. Looking around, she saw no sign of the bad weather. The ground was dry. The early sun revealed a patch of mountainside and warmed the car behind her.
The street she lived on, Plumbago Road, was in the hilly part of the town, foothills of the Blue Mountains. From where she stood she could see the sea. Any minute now the ship would appear on the horizon. It was Saturday and that meant she would drive down to the harbor with her father.
Eli Joseph wasn't paid for his services as a justice of the peace. He earned a living operating a small taxi business. There were two taxis: a hired man drove the old gray Morris, and Mr. Joseph drove the black Chrysler that Ida now leaned against. Most Saturdays she would go with him, first to the courthouse to see if anyone needed him to notarize documents. After that they made a few stops, maybe at the pharmacy or the Cricket Oval. Then they would drive to the harbor to pick up passengers.
When the United Fruit Company ships arrived, all the life of Port Antonio drew to the harbor. They were huge, sleek ships, part of the company's Great White Fleet, and they impressed Ida. Her father, who often went aboard, told her that above deck was "luxury, pure luxury," with air-conditioned lounges and spacious rooms for the American passengers. Below deck, the real business of the vessel took place: bananas-thousands of them, loaded into the refrigerated holds for the ship's return voyage to America. The loading of bananas always took place at night. During the daytime bustle of arriving and departing tourists, the banana workers were practically invisible. Instead, there would be cart men selling coconut water and souvenirs, straw weavers with jipijapa hats, calypso singers with maracas and guitars; the crazy man who called himself King George the Fifth would be there too, and taxi drivers would guide the passengers through the crowd.
"Ida!" she heard her mother calling from inside the house.
Ida turned to face the car window, where, after a quick approval of her reflection, she took in the beige seats of the Chrysler. It was a big car with room for four passengers in the back. One of the things she liked best about driving in the taxi was the way the foreigners smelled. She wasn't sure what it was exactly-it wasn't on them; it was around them and around their luggage as if they'd brought some of the foreign air with them.
It was unusual for a man like Eli Joseph-a white man and a Syrian-to drive a taxi. He was actually Lebanese, but in Jamaica they were all called Syrians: the Jews, Lebanese, Arabs, and actual Syrians who had come to Jamaica and made fortunes, all of them except Eli Joseph. A man of great ideas, he was often heard saying, "If I could just raise enough capital."
He was considered a "character," not so much by the people of Port Antonio as by his family in Kingston, the wealthy Joseph-Hanna clan who owned the beer and soda business. To the black people of Port Antonio, the fact that he was a Joseph, a white man, and a justice of the peace guaranteed him a certain amount of respect; that he played dominoes and drank rum with them earned him their affection.
"Ida! You don't hear me callin' an' callin'?"
Her mother, Esme, had come outside.
For a moment the mother and the daughter stood and eyed one another.
Esme was a stout black woman whose overweight body moved with surprising grace. She had small Chinese eyes and a saintly expression that concealed how strict a parent she was. Her daughter looked as if she belonged to a different race: fair-skinned with long black hair pulled back from her forehead with a tortoiseshell bandeau. Her dark eyebrows drew attention to large, expressive eyes. It was hard to describe her as anything but beautiful. But Esme, who did not want her to grow up vain and stupid, made little of her daughter's good looks.
"You out here idlin' while you father waitin' for the newspaper?"
Ida had forgotten that this was why she had come outside. She picked up the Daily Gleaner and walked up the paved path between the gate and the trellised veranda. There was a row of conch shells on either side of the path. Her grandmother, who had put them there, said conch shells protected homes from natural disasters. They were pretty. The little garden was pretty too but crowded; her mother worked hard to contain the lush flowers in the small space-bird-of-paradise, heliconia, bougainvillea, and tree-orchids-vibrant things that clawed, latched, and climbed if they were not constantly pruned.
Inside, the house smelled of buttered toast. It was a shining, clean house with furniture that was too large for the rooms.
Her mother looked at her and frowned. "Why you let out you hair? Go plait it," she said and went into the kitchen.
Ida's father was drinking his coffee and listening to the radio. He took the newspaper from her, not seeming the least bit annoyed about having waited. He was a slender, unmuscular man, with deeply tanned skin that sometimes led people to think he was Indian. Like his daughter, he had large, dark eyes, and he had long eyelashes that might have made him look effeminate if he hadn't had such a wide, square jaw.
He was still wearing just his undershirt, and Ida could see the gold Virgin Mary pendant he always wore.
"Eh-eh, Ida. Look here," he said, opening the paper. "Errol Flynn is in Jamaica."
She looked over his shoulder and saw a picture of a man with wavy hair and a sword. She read:
WORLD'S HANDSOMEST MAN IS HERE
Actor Errol Flynn Arrives in Jamaica Unexpectedly
"He's a big movie star," her father explained.
Ida had seen only one movie, Tarzan the Ape Man, when someone had donated a projector to Father Reynold's school down the road.
Eli called to Esme back in the kitchen, "You hear that, Esme? Errol Flynn in Jamaica!"
Flynn leaned against the railing of the hotel balcony, letting the sights and sounds of the tropical morning minister to him. The sun warmed his face and the green hills unrolled before him to a bright and tranquil sea.
He was almost forty and looked all right, he thought, in spite of the extra pounds around his waist. Yes, he looked all right but felt like a man who'd reached the end rather than the prime of his life. If only it worked like a sandglass-life, the accumulating years-now would be the time, he thought, to turn the whole thing upside down.
He'd made more than twenty films and was proud of only one, Gentleman Jim. His second marriage was doomed, just as his first had been. He had a son and two daughters he never saw; in fact, he had no idea where they were. And he'd been tried for rape! The statutory rape of two girls he swore he'd never even seen before they appeared in the courtroom. He'd been acquitted on all counts, but the long, highly publicized trial had dragged him through a stench that still lingered. How had he, Errol Leslie Thompson Flynn-son of the respected zoologist Professor Thompson Flynn-gotten himself so deep in the muck? He wouldn't have known what to do with himself if it hadn't been for the Zaca, his schooner. Its name was a Samoan word for "peace."
In an earlier century he would have been an explorer, he thought, like Magellan. Maybe a poet too. He'd always loved the sea, dreamed of a life at sea, and often felt nostalgic about his childhood on Tasmania's coast (darting in and out of the marine lab where his father had studied the platypus-an animal without a scrotum!).
A month after the trial, he'd set sail with his man Ramon, a first-class Mexican sailor, steering the Zaca through the Panama Canal, heading for Haiti.
At night watch he'd lain on his back on deck, looking at the stars, feeling like a weightless speck on the planet, or a kind of deviant Ulysses willing to sail anywhere but home. His house on Mulholland Drive was about as appealing to him as a pile of unread newspapers. Good Lord, anywhere but home.
One night during his watch the air grew unusually still. The next day the sky turned red like a puffy wound. The barometer fell. The radio signals went. Then the hurricane winds hit suddenly, unlike anything he'd ever seen or heard, ripping the storm sail. They'd put out the heavy anchors but even then the boat had skittered across the water. Then the galley put out, washing away all their supplies, their maps and passports.
There'd been hours when he hadn't been able to distinguish between the elements-black sky, black water. Strangely, the thought of death hadn't crossed his mind. Death wasn't action, and this was action: straining muscles and nerves. It had revived him. Yes, it had taken a hurricane to lift him out of his middle-aged slump.
The storm passed quickly, but for two days they'd drifted in a shark-filled sea with no radio, no supplies, and no idea where they were.
Then he saw a body of land in the distance, a hazy outline of mountains against the sky. They drifted toward it, almost running aground at a small desert island along the way. It was another hour before the current pushed them close enough for him to make out a harbor town nestled below the most serene mountains he'd ever seen.
As he got closer, he grew puzzled. He knew he'd never been to the place before, but there was something familiar about it, especially the stone fort at the edge of the water with its black cannons pointing to sea.
There were some boys sitting along the fort's wall watching the Zaca drift in.
"What is this country?" Flynn shouted across to them.
"Jamaica."
He laughed. Jamaica!
"Onward to Jamaica and to victory!" had been his battle cry on the set of Captain Blood. His first leading role, it had made him a star. Of course, the whole thing had been filmed at the studio, not on location, but hadn't he defeated a Spanish fleet here-not once but twice-and saved the island? And won Olivia de Havilland's admiration to boot?
Some fishermen towed the boat in. They seemed unfriendly, and particularly suspicious of Ramon, whom they mistook to be Cuban. "Cubana? Turtle? Tortuga?" they kept asking Ramon, who looked at them, baffled.
Flynn saw a sign that said, "Welcome to Port Antonio." A coastguard officer led them to a small wooden office that looked like an army barrack. Like the fishermen, he seemed agitated by Ramon's presence. Later Flynn learned that there'd been trouble with Cuban fishermen stealing sea turtles from Jamaican waters.
The coastguard officer telephoned his superior: "I have a Cuban here, sir, and he's with an American named Earl Flint. What should I do, sir?"
Flynn found a scrap of paper and wrote out his correct name, and the man spelled it out over the phone. "Awright, sir, yes."
Flynn looked around. The boys who had been sitting on the seawall had gathered outside and were peeking in the doorway. No one seemed to know who he was. For a moment he had an odd feeling, like a man suddenly aware of himself dying, that something real and unfilmable was happening to him.
"Police car comin' to take you to Kingston," the coastguard officer said.
Flynn asked if he and Ramon could have something to eat, and they were taken to a cart man selling food and soft drinks along the pier.
And it was there, out on the pier, that he was recognized by the Indian ladies selling bangles and khus-khus perfume. The usually demure sariclad ladies became agitated. One of them ran down the pier shouting, "Errol Flynn ... oh, God!"
Soon there was a small crowd around him-tourists and Jamaicans, including the previously distrustful fishermen. The harbor's infirmary nurse appeared because in the commotion someone either fainted or fell. The coastguard officer was overwhelmed as the crowd started getting bigger. Finally the police jeep arrived; Flynn and Ramon were given raisin buns and sodas and taken to Kingston.
The evening Star reported:
FLYNN'S FANS FAINT
Women Fall Unconscious at Movie Star's Feet
It was not the sari-clad ladies who had fainted, and actually, the report was wrong: only one woman fainted, an English tourist buying straw baskets. She looked up when she heard the commotion and saw him-disheveled, unshaven, but unmistakably her matinee idol. ("Chu!" Esme said when Eli read this out loud, "it was probably the heat why she fainted." "No man, is how the women go on when they see him," Eli said.) After this report in the Star, fainting became epidemic among the young women of the island whenever they glimpsed Errol Flynn, or thought they had. Some pretended to faint so they could say they had seen him.
Ida and her father visited the harbor to look at Errol Flynn's wrecked boat.
"If his boat is here, he must come back for it sooner or later," Eli said.
A policeman was guarding the Zaca. He seemed disgruntled, and Ida could see why. He'd enjoyed some fame after appearing in a newspaper picture guarding Flynn's damaged boat from onlookers. Now, a week later, people had lost interest in the wreck, and he had nothing to do but sit all day, waving away flies.
All the attention had turned to Kingston, where Flynn was being royally entertained and courted by the country's richest families. He stayed in their mansions. The British High Commissioner had a dinner in his honor. He had numerous invitations and met with all kinds of Jamaicans-radio-show hosts, the Jamaica Nurses Association. People sent him baskets of tropical fruit, rum, and native artwork. The admiration was not one-sided. Flynn told reporters, "Jamaica's more beautiful than any woman I've ever known."
A wealthy Jamaican named Aaron Levy invited him to stay at his beach hotel in Ocho Rios. As Flynn was being driven across the island to Levy's hotel, he was aware of a lightheartedness he hadn't felt in ages. Jamaica reminded him of the most enjoyable years of his life, the carefree, spirited years he'd spent in the South Seas before he'd become an actor. It occurred to him as he drove through the mountains, looking out on a landscape so rampantly green that the soil never showed, that he could be happy again. Here was everything he wanted: warm climate, wonderful food, deep-sea diving, sailing, peaceful countryside-and the people spoke English. He'd spend four or five months of the year here. It would restore him.
"This must be the Paradise written about in the Bible," he said on a local radio show.
These words of appreciation delighted everyone and were quoted in local newspapers, living rooms, and tenement yards. "Flynn Fever" broke out, as one newspaper put it. FLYNN FANS FRACAS, another headline stated, describing the disorder that broke out at a cinema during a showing of Objective Burma when members of the audience thought they saw Errol Flynn sitting among them The article was written by the same reporter who had devised the erroneous headline FLYNN'S FANS FAINT. Another of his headlines, in fact his last on the subject, was:
FLYNN FAN FALLS DEAD
An elderly female died of an apparent heart-attack as she walked out of the Cross Roads post office around 2 p.m. yesterday. Bystanders claim that they saw a vehicle with someone who looked like Errol Flynn going by. The Chief-of-Police issued a statement saying: "There seems to be no relation between the two incidents."
But there was still the problem of Flynn's passport having been lost at sea. Ramon, who had gone ahead to America, had experienced trouble getting back into the country without identification. The World's Handsomest Man actually had no proof that he was Errol Flynn. His wife in California sent him the only identification she could dig up, a copy of their marriage certificate. But since it was only a copy, he needed to have it notarized.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from the Pirate's Daughter by margaret cezair-thompson Copyright © 2007 by Margaret Cezair-Thompson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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