Born and raised in Vieux Fort, the southernmost town on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, home to Nobel Laureates, Derek Walcott and Sir Arthur Lewis, Anderson Reynolds who spent the second twenty years of his life in America attending college and then working in corporate America, has, since his return home, quickly become one of the country’s most prolific and significant writers.
In the world of Anderson Reynolds, be it his fictional or nonfictional world, a great drama unfolds in which history, geography, nature, culture, the supernatural, and socioeconomic factors all combine to seal the fate of his characters. In this crucible of a world, readers are provided with deep insights into where St. Lucians come from, who they are as a people, and how they became who they are.
For example, all three of the author’s published books — The Stall Keeper (2017), The Struggle for Survival: an historical, political and socioeconomic perspective of St. Lucia (2003), and Death by Fire (2001) — present a world in which the characters are victims of their circumstances. History, geography, the supernatural, love denied or love betrayed, parental neglect, adverse socioeconomic conditions all come together to seal the fate of individuals, communities, or for that matter the fate of a whole nation or a civilization. Is there any escape or any hope of rising above circumstances of birth and geography?
Well, maybe. A hint of an answer is provided in The Struggle for Survival, where the narrator says, “But refusing to take a page from history, farmers went on a strike and history repeated itself.” So in the world of Anderson Reynolds, knowledge and understanding of one’s history and culture represent the only possible means of escape from one’s fate. In other words, “man know thyself and do thyself no harm.” But even so, there are no guarantees, for in The Stall Keeper Ruben was well equipped with a knowledge of his history and culture, yet this did not prevent his downfall.
