The Summer Country

Lauren Willig, with her latest novel, The Summer Country (#842), has finally written her "...M.M. Kaye meets The Thorn Birds book!"  It is, indeed, an epic and entertaining tale, full of secrets.

Set amongst the lavish life styles of the sugar plantation owners and the extreme poverty of their slaves and ex-slaves on the island of Barbados, the cat is set among the pigeons when newcomer Emily Dawson and her cousin Adam Fenty and his wife arrive in Bridgetown in 1854.  When Jonathan Fenty, the head of a successful import/export company dies in Bristol, England, he leaves the business to Adam to carry on.  What no one expected was his legacy to Emily, the poor relation of the family, but Fenty's favorite granddaughter: the deed to a plantation on the island of Barbados, Perverills.  When the English cousins arrive on the island, they are greeted by their grandfather's trusted business partner, London Turner.  The expectation is that Emily will sell Peverills immediately.  Instead, she chooses to inspect her property before making a decision.  The Davenants, owners of the neighboring plantation, Beckles, invite the cousins to stay there, since Peverills turns out to be a burned-out ruin, but Emily senses that there is more at play here than simple hospitality.  The answers to what happened at Peverills lie in the past, during a slave uprising in 1816.

The novel alternates between events in 1854, when slavery has been abolished on Barbados and Emily is deciding whether her destiny is on Barbados or back in England, and forty years earlier, a time when the economy depended on slavery in 1812, blighting the lives of both owners and the enslaved.  The past is not so far away, after all...

I really enjoyed spending time engrossed in Ms. Willig's story-telling.  Does everyone get what they deserve here?  Probably not, but it is still satisfying when old wrongs are finally righted.  If you ever breathlessly read and hung on The Thorn Birds, or M.M. Kaye's classic The Far Pavilions or Trade Winds, The Summer Country is a worthy successor.  Stake out a shady spot to settle in, with a cool drink at hand.