From The Publisher
Set in the picturesque Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Death by Fire is an epic novel in which natural calamities, historical events, supernatural forces, and betrayed love all combine in deciding the fate of its characters.
Felina, a woman with a childhood plagued by disaster, is betrayed by her first love, but not before she is pregnant with Robert. Unable or unwilling to forgive Robert’s father, she takes out her misplaced hatred on her son. Christine, on the other hand, is blessed with an unsurpassed beauty and she refuses to allow her misfortunes to interfere with her zest for life. A life in which she has little time for her son, Trevor. The two women are never to become friends and they have little in common. Their ancestors are from different corners of the globe, their lifestyles are as different as night and day. Nevertheless, their sons become bosom friends, and it turns out that parental neglect produces nearly the same fate as parental hatred.
Death by Fire is a profound statement on the nature of fate and the forces that shape society. A story that is as compelling and spellbinding as the island in which it is set is beautiful. The novel brings to mind the works of William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Jamaica Kincaid.
Praise for Death by Fire
“Death by Fire is an impressive piece of narration … A veritable tapestry of St. Lucian life and culture … Reading it left me with a seething appetite for more. Easily one of the most compelling pieces of literature I have laid hands on in recent years.”
—Modeste Downes, author of Phases
“The telling of the story is exceptional … Extremely difficult to put it down … A cunningly-woven tale … A journey back into St. Lucian life … (which) paints the dark side of the struggle for survival in a young country.”
—Victor Marquis, The Voice
“A novel on a grand scale … A broad canvas of St. Lucian life … If one is looking for a key to the feeling and conscience of the age in which we live, this novel is a guide.”
—Jacques Compton, The Crusader
A book with a distinct voice. Recently I made a trip to my homeland and I was fortunate to have been introduced to St.Lucian literature. I was amazed at the caliber of books I read and I am pleased to say I have added this find to my book collections which includes the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Sun Tzu to name a few. The novel is raw and revealing. It exposes all the layers of St. Lucian society. From the exploitation of youthful innocence to the male psyche and sexual promiscuity. Kudos for exploring taboo subjects rape, father/daughter relationship, mother/ son relationship ( Trevor & Christine). I was captivated from the 1st page. The themes of racism, poverty, and strong female characters were well developed. I enjoyed the use of colorful vocab or local patois which captured nuances difficult to be conveyed by the English language. Whilst reading I experienced a gamut of emotions joy and laughter, anger, sadness and dismay. This is definitely a ” must read” I highly recommend a kindle version.
—Kindle Reader
Reviews
The Voice Newspaper
I couldn’t put it down. Often we hear that remark made of someone reading a Stephen King novel, a John Grisham tale, a Sidney Sheldon mystery. Not about an Anderson Reynolds first effort.
Who is Anderson Reynolds, you ask? Anderson Reynolds is a name you will come to remember. Born and raised in Vieux Fort, St. Lucia, he holds a doctorate degree in Food and Resource Economics from the University of Florida. Particularly, he is the author of a new book, Death by Fire, published by Jako Books.
Set in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Death by Fire partially traces the history of the island, from the era of the Caribs and Arawaks to the mid nineteen-seventies, delving in addition, into the transportation here of the blacks from Africa and indentured labourers from India, to work on the sugar plantations. But don’t be misled by that last paragraph. This is not one of those mundane, usual accounts of St. Lucia’s history, with facts and dates. This is a cunningly-woven tale of people; of families originating from the African and Indian continents, of their lives in St. Lucia, and especially of their tribulations, passions, loves, frustrations, and the intricate way in which they touched and influenced each other. It brings together the interaction of people of different racial origins, black, white and Indian, in a seething cauldron of love, lust, hate and disaster.
Set in the main, against the background of such national catastrophes as the Ravine Poisson landslide and the two great Castries fires, the novel weaves the stories of individuals whose raw emotions, and the animal passions that drive them, are laid bare with a starkness that in places, may even go as far as to shock the reader.
This is a book in which tragedy dominates. It is a story which paints the dark side of the struggle for survival in a young country, which plunges into the depths of human degradation, with its main characters doing any and everything which they consider necessary to enable each to accomplish his/her ends-some of which are, to say the least, less than honest or honorable.
The telling of the story is exceptional. It is a treat for those St. Lucians who, like myself, remember life in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. One is transported to yesteryear with an amazing matter-of-factness. The author uses St. Lucian terms and expressions which supply just the appropriate character and atmosphere to the account. This, while constituting one of the factors which gave the book such a grip on my attention, maybe the only small drawback in the eyes of someone who is not too familiar with St. Lucian customs, history, and colloquialism. However, it is an excellent medium to acquire some knowledge in those areas.
If you are a St. Lucian, you should, like me, love this book. My advice is to get hold of a copy, and prepare yourself for a journey back into St. Lucian life, the way it used to be. Get your favorite armchair, something nice and cool to drink, and make sure you have some free time ahead of you. For it is my opinion that, like me, you’re going to find it extremely difficult to put it down.
The Mirror Newspaper
Earlier this year (2001), Dr. Anderson Reynolds, author of the 205 page novel, Death by Fire, published by Jako Books, entered his book for the scrutiny of the panel of judges of the M&C Fine Arts Awards. As it turned out, Death by Fire won the Main Literature Award for 2001. No one was surprised. No one complained.
Death by Fire is a creative, imaginative and talented piece of writing by a young PhD graduate of the University of Florida.
The book sets out to present the young island of St. Lucia trying to settle down following the historic wars of occupation and possession by European powers. Its initial focus is on the French, one of the main contenders, over their decision to relocate the island’s capital from Soufriere on the west coast, home of the gods’, to present day Castries, formerly known as La Carenage.’
The author has however sought to wrest the reader’s attention by way of a preamble akin to and as forceful as the stories in ancient Greek mythology. The Arawak-Carib ancestral connection is thereby established, and the centrality of position and influence of the Gods throughout the island’s history, and particularly during major developments and events, will become an absolutely justifiable, indeed necessary and recurring theme.
In Death by Fire, Dr. Reynolds has crafted a veritable tapestry of St. Lucian life and culture. One gets much more than a passing encounter with characters playing out their set roles, living out their personalities or showing off their peculiarities and idiosyncrasies in keeping with the plot, as is the norm with the average fiction novel. Death by Fire informs, or rather educates the reader on the social, economic and political modes of existence of the inhabitants in the post slavery/emancipation periods through to the early 19th and into the 20th century. The struggles with life on the plantations; the necessary but life-threatening charcoal trade; the hardships encountered by farmers in the growing and harvesting of bananas which replaced the sugar industry; and modern day perceptions of policies and responses to the needs of the young former colony, now administered by local politicians, and businessmen of both indigenous and foreign stock, are all vividly portrayed.
While the main characters may be fictitious the events recounted represent, for the most part, the real country and its people then and now. Major historical occurrences, like the 1948 Castries fire; the 1938 Ravine Poisson landslide; the early prejudices and tensions between East Indians and Africans (Negs) are described with a mixture of vigor, accuracy and freshness that compels the reader to keep on reading.
Death by Fire is held together by two distinctive elements: one, the author’s writing style and descriptive ability in presenting a historical fact, a social anecdote or alluding to the role of the gods. The other feature is borne out by the quality of the main characters he has created. From Nelda, Felina’s mother, who laboured in the charcoal yard on the Castries wharf and later died in a pool of blood, undoubtedly the end result of years of overexposure to the deadly dust; Robert who developed a lifelong relationship with Trevor who, despite his best efforts could never succeed in shaking off the one who became his shadow persuaded him in participating in a string of antisocial and criminal acts; Felina, Robert’s mother who hated his guts for a failed relationship with his father; and of course, there’s the imposing character called Christine whom the author has endowed with feminine qualities that reduce all other women in the land to architectural blunders.
Among other notable features of the book one cannot overlook the depiction of Castries as having a permanent rendezvous with devastating fires. The unyielding phenomenon of married men lusting after younger flesh even in the very presence of their wives. One notes too, whether it is to portray the people as highly religious or to ascribe unexplained phenomena to a supreme being, the writer has maintained a prominent, rather a dominant role for the gods of the land and to traditional religion as a crucial factor in determining the destinies of places and people. (Did not the irreligiousity and hedonism of the residents of the twin communities of L’Abayee and Ravine Poisson not incur the wrath of the gods in the fact of a cataclysmic landslide that took 92 lives?)
If I can find one point for criticism it is that: considering the author began his story of the island with the mythical historical and delved into actual history by usage of fictitious characters, I would have been more comfortable if he would have maintained the trend of allowing invented personages to represent even modern day personalities. I am persuaded by the view that the naming of actual, identifiable political figures in particular, in the latter part of the book, subjects an otherwise excellent portrayal to the political misjudgments and prejudices of some readers.
All in all Death by Fire is an impressive piece of narration by a young debutant. Reading it left me with a seething appetite for more. Easily one of the most compelling pieces of literature I have laid hands on in recent years.
The Crusader Newspaper
“Disaster is no stranger to Saint Lucia” wrote the North American magazine, Time, following the passage of hurricane Allen which devastated the island in 1980.
In ‘Death By Fire’ a first novel by the Saint Lucian writer, Anderson Reynolds, we are presented with a series of disasters which afflict the island and which affect in one way or the other. It is also a broad canvas of Saint Lucian life that Mr. Reynolds paints for his readers and in which there are several personages. Prominent among them and forming the central characters are Felina and her son, Robert, and Christine and her son, Trevor.
The setting is the small community of Conway on the edge of the city of Castries, the island’s capital, a community which we first encountered in fiction with the publication of Garth St. Omer’s novella, ‘Sirop’. Garth St. Omer was Saint Lucia’s first novelist.
‘Death By Fire’ is a novel on the grand scale in which Mr. Reynolds deals with several themes: natural calamities and historical events –the devastation by fire, on several occasions, of the capital, Castries, the Ravine Poison disaster of 1938 of which Mr. Secra Gipson had depicted as a Carnival presentation some years ago; the supernatural intervention and revenge of the Carib gods, miscegenation, betrayal in love, the consequences of peer pressure on youngsters; the absence of love and its consequences to the family. Interspersed with sex and crimes of violence and in a language sometimes reminiscent of Henry Miller and William Burroughs in its crudity, all those themes combine in deciding the fate and destiny of several of the personages in the novel.
The book has an interesting and intriguing opening, a mixture of history, myth and the supernatural; the removal of the capital by the French from Soufriere, home of the gods of the land, to Carenage, a place the gods despised, seemed to have angered the gods immensely. Jealous and revengeful, the gods of the land decide to punish whoever crosses their path and blaspheme against them.
Throughout the book the author so worked it into the novel that whatever happened in the capital, the land and the personages in the book, is ascribed to the vengeance of the gods of the land. The French settlers suffer the wrath of the gods of the land for moving the capital. The English who came later also suffered. So does the new capital, Carenage, re-named Castries after the French Marechal de Castries, but the gods of the land were not confused by the change of name and they take their revenge.
“On the night of May 14, 1927, the gods of the land visited Castries with fire. The fire consumed seventeen city blocks, including the Entire business sector. The whole town would have burnt down, but fortunately the gods of the sea took pity on the people most of whom had nothing to do with moving the capital, and the sea stopped the fire. The gods left Castries furious, but there was nothing they could do. The sea was beyond their reach. So they bided their time, and on the night of June 19, 1948, when the gods of the sea were on vacation, the gods of the land poured vengeance on Castries as never seen before.”
The novel takes the reader backwards and forwards in time, establishing the genealogy of the principal personages, Felina, Christine, Robert and Trevor, moving towards their inevitable tragedy.
Felina, who has known nothing but deceit in love and constant disaster; her son, Robert, whom she brutalize, misplaced hatred for the boy’s father who had betrayed her. Christine, the young woman of unrivalled beauty who has very little time for her son, Trevor, so bent is she on enjoying life to the full. Their two sons who become inseparable friends and partners in crime—shoplifting, rape, house-breaking and theft, until, mustering his courage, Trevor, at last, refuses to take part in the most heinous of crimes, the robbery and murder of two expatriate whites, a husband and wife from the United States of America.
“Men at some time are masters of their fate” wrote Shakespeare in ‘Julius Caesar’, but the curse and thirst for vengeance of the gods of the land for the disrespect shown to their wishes, and for those not seeking their advice, make the fate of the principal personages inevitable.
The blurb states that ‘Death By Fire’ brings to mind the novels of William Faulkner, Toni Morrison and the West Indian writer, Jamaica Kincaid. That is a claim that I do not share. I was reminded, instead, of the Nigerian writers Amos Tutuola, and Ben Okri for the part that myth, legend and the supernatural play in the story. As for the fate of the young man, Robert, the novel which came immediately to mind was Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son’ from the U. S. A.
Mr. Anderson Reynolds is a most competent story-teller and for the most part handles his subject matter very well, touching upon some very complex psychological chords in the reader, but all too often one comes upon a looseness in the writing, a phraseology too banal, that jars and detracts where some polishing would have heightened the enjoyment of the novel.
Nonetheless, this is a novel of present-day Saint Lucia in which the social, economic, political and personal tensions are profound statements on the nature of the island’s society, and one which ought to be required reading for anyone seeking a greater understanding of what is happening today, and for those who might wish to shape a better society for future generations. If one were looking for a key to the feeling and conscience of the age in which we live, this novel could serve as a guide.
The Jako Magazine
Although Anderson Reynold’s Death by Fire, touches on slavery, in contrast to the other novels under review—Season of Mist and Neg Maron: Freedom Fighters—most of the novel takes place in the post-slavery period and through to the early 1970’s. And although the novel visits places as far-off as India, most of it is set in Castries, and within Castries, the slums of the Conway, which in more recent times have been cleared and replaced with high-rise government building blocs, a multi-storey carpark, and a Julian’s Supermarket.
Against the backdrop of the mythical gods of the land (meant to be the famous St. Lucian Pitons) reaping havoc on the French for moving the capital from Soufriere to Castries, on the Caribs for allowing the French to carry away the capital, and on Castries for accepting the capital too greedily, Death by Fire tells the story of two mothers and their sons, and how the nature of the relations between the mothers and their sons influenced how the sons turn out. On one hand, there is Christine, a never-before-seen beauty, who completely neglects her son, Trevor, because her fast-paced and glamorous life leaves her with little time for him. On the other hand, there is Felina, a woman betrayed by her first love but not before she is made pregnant with his son, Robert. Unable or unwilling to forgive her lover, she transposes her hatred of him to Robert. The story says that the two women were never to become friends. However, facing different but equally debilitating circumstances at home the two boys seek solace in each other and become bosom friends. And as often happens when children are neglected and or abused the two boys follow a path of petty crime and antisocial behavior, such that it is clear to Colletta, Conway’s self-proclaimed soothsayer, where Robert, who seems to have passed on his mother’s hatred of him on to the world, will end up. The only question is whether Trevor, the more timid of the two and who bears no one ill will end up the same place with Robert.
What brought the two women to the Conway partly explains their disposition. Valda, Christine’s Indian grandmother, is tricked into migrating to St. Lucia as an indentured servant when her husband and stepmother (obviously) wrongly concluded that she couldn’t bear children. Julita, Valda’s daughter and Christine’s mother, was kicked out of her home by her father when he found out she was pregnant for Leonce, a black man. The couple left the Forestiere-Baboneau area and moved to Castries. At eighteen and in the heights of her crowning glory Christine became pregnant with Trevor for a married man who, for obvious reasons, wished to keep the affair undercover. To make up for his need for secrecy he bought Christine a two-room house in the Conway. As for Felina, her father and five brothers and sisters were killed in the great 1938 landslide that claimed 92 lives. Only by a miracle was Felina and her mother, Nelda, saved. After the landslide, Felina and Nelda moved to Castries where Nelda found work as a charbonnier, an activity that would eventually claim her life, and which would cause Felina to part ways with God.
Death by Fire provides a dramatization of many of the great natural calamities and historical events that have shaped St. Lucian society. Slavery, East Indian indentureship, the great 1938 landslide at the twin villages of L’Abbaye and Ravine Poisson, the 1948 Castries fire that destroyed three-quarters of the city, the terrible outbreak of cholera in 1854 that by one account claimed 1500 lives, the coal-carrying plight of the charbonniers when Castries was a coaling station, and the carrying of bananas unto Geest Banana boats by armies of women, are all depicted and integrated in the novel and are shown to have great impact on the lives of the characters who inhabit it.
Death by Fire asks several questions that are very pertinent to modern day St. Lucian society with its youth disengagement and escalating crime rate. What are the causes of crime and other forms of antisocial behavior? Are crime and social decay a result of poverty, unemployment, depressed socioeconomic circumstances? Or a result of obeah or some other form of malice or curse that someone has placed on the people? Or is it a result of the punishment a hidden force such as God, or an evil spirit or the mythical gods of the land (as in Death by Fire) has heaped upon the people for some unknown crime, or for living in abomination, as was the case of Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah? Why are some people poor? Is it because they are just plainly and simply lazy? Or is it because of governmental neglect: the government hasn’t done enough to educate its citizens and to foster the climate and infrastructure that would allow businesses to thrive and thus improve the island’s unemployment situation.? What do the home (parental disposition, the relationship between parents and children) and family structure have to say about how children turn out? And how do the attitudes and prejudices of the community influence (negatively or positively) the psychology of children?
Additionally, Death by Fire provides a characterization of the social and economic conflicts that used to plague the relationship between Indians and Blacks in St. Lucia’s recent past. The novel also provides a meditation on the nature of fate. It begs the question: Are our lives preordained from birth, so no matter how hard to the contrary we try, our fates are sealed? Or is there something called free will that allows us to determine how our lives will turn out? If so, how do we explain the many acts of nature (the 1938 landslide, for example) and man (slavery, for example) over which the vast majority of us have little control?
Taken together, Season of Mist, Neg Maron: Freedom Fighters, and Death by Fire, summarize the past of present-day St. Lucians. The first two novels dwell on slavery and, by extension, its enduring mark on the St. Lucian psyche. Still, within this dark era of St. Lucian history, both Season of Mist and Neg Maron: Freedom Fighters capture the period, though brief, during which our ancestors took control over their lives and many fought to gain their freedom and others to maintain it, thus clearly suggesting that our ancestors hadn’t taken slavery lying down, but, like most other people in such circumstances, did everything in their power to undermine the plantations and to seek their freedom. Taking off where these two novels ended, Death by Fire focuses on the post-slavery era, the period when we began having a say in how our lives were conducted, and explores the forces that have shaped our society. In the process, the novel provides a cultural and sociological characterization of near present-day St. Lucian society. Therefore, together, these three novels provide no less than a slice of the cross-section of St. Lucian history and sociology.
