Jako Books has announced that multiple-award winning St. Lucian author, Dr. Anderson Reynolds, will be embarking on an international tour of The Stall Keeper, the author’s award-winning third book and second novel, set in his hometown of Vieux Fort, using the American World War II of the town as backdrop. The tour will involve several reading and/or book signing stops, including Toronto: October 17; Atlanta: October 21; New York: October 22, 28, & 29; Washington DC: November 4; and London: November 9.
According to the book’s cover copy, “The inhabitants of Vieux Fort, a Caribbean town occupied by the Americans during World War II, were said to be waiting for the Americans’ return to bring back the good times. Five-year-old Henry whose father died when he was eighteen months old was still walking up to men asking, “Mister, are you my father?” His mother, Eunice, a strict Seventh Day Adventist with the gift of foretelling the future, would not be unequally yoked. Eugene, a stall keeper and the town’s most colorful and free-spirited character, was a woman living in a man’s body, and a man living in a woman’s world. Ruben, a favorite son, an intellectual, a famous cricketer and a staunch Roman Catholic, falls madly in love with Eunice. What happens in Vieux Fort when Henry teams up with Eugene and Ruben warms his way into the heart of Eunice is a tale of magic and tragedy.”
The writings of Dr. Reynolds, be it fiction or nonfiction, has been described as a world in which a great drama unfolds where history, geography, nature, culture, the supernatural, and socioeconomic and political factors all combine to seal the fate of its 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. If so, then readers are in for a treat, because The Stall Keeper provides deep insights into the forces that have shaped Vieux Fort; it
Unsurprisingly, The Stall Keeper has garnered much praise. For example, Allan Weekes, author of Talk of the Devil, said: “The Stall Keeper is a compelling story of provincial bigotry, coming of age, religious experience and rivalry, faith, fanaticism, the supernatural, frustrated love, and the repression of intelligence and ambition, played against the beautiful wide-open spaces and relics of post American World War II occupied Vieux Fort.”
CARICOM economist and diplomat, Peter Lansiquot, said: “The Stall Keeper should be read by every Saint Lucian man, woman, child and professor of literature! … This delectable bowl of hot, steaming Lucian bouillon, spiced up with canelles and calaloo … crafted by the most articulately exciting Lucian craftsman of the written word I have met to date, takes Vieux Fort by the neck and shakes it vigorously, releasing into the breezy Iyanolan atmosphere all of Vieux Fort’s idiosyncrasies … made me laugh, giggle, ponderous, sad and glad, all at once … made me immensely proud to be Lucian!”
Born and raised in Vieux Fort, St. Lucia, Anderson Reynolds holds a PhD in Food and Resource Economics from the University of Florida. In recent years, Dr. Reynolds has emerged as one of St. Lucia’s most prominent and prolific writers. His first book, the novel, Death by