Island Beneath the Sea

Island Beneath the Sea. Isabel Allende. 2009. Harper. 457 pages. (Source: Audio library)

First sentence: "In my forty years I, Zarite, have had better luck than other slaves."

Plot: Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarite -- known as Tete-- is the daughter of and African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage.  Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tete finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves.  When twenty-year old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it's with powdered wigs in his baggage and dreams of financial success in his mind.  But running his father's plantation, Saint-Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy.  It will be eight years before he brings home a bride -- bud marriage, too, proves more difficult than he imagined.  And Valmorain remains dependent on the services of his teenage slave. 

My thoughts:  It took me some time to get into this one but when I did I hated to have it come to an end.  I wanted to know more about Tete and her children.  How they favored in life as free people.  The details of this story weren't always pleasant to read but they are actual things that happened in history, good or bad.  I am not one who wants to pretend that these awful things didn't happen but I hope we learned from the past and that these terrible things stay in the past.  I love stories with a happy ending and this one had a bitter sweet ending.