Ebook The Tide Between Us Ms Olive Collins 9781838530563 Books
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1821 After the landlord of Lugdale Estate in Kerry is assassinated, young Art O’Neill’s innocent father is hanged and Art is deported to the cane fields of Jamaica as an indentured servant. On Mangrove Plantation he gradually acclimatises to the exotic country and unfamiliar customs of the African slaves, and achieves a kind of contentment. When the new heirs to the plantation arrive from Ireland they resurrect the ghosts of brutal injustices against Art. He bides his time and hides his abhorrence from his owners. During those years he prospers, he sees his coloured children freed after emancipation, he owns land and his family thrive. Eventually he is promised seven gold coins when he finishes his service, but he doubts his master will part with the coins. One hundred years later in Ireland, a skeleton is discovered beneath a fallen tree on the grounds of Lugdale Estate. By its side is a gold coin minted in 1870. Yseult, the owner of the estate, watches as events unfold, fearful of the long-buried truths that may emerge about her family’s past and its links to the slave trade. As the skeleton gives up its secrets, Yseult realises she too can no longer hide.
Ebook The Tide Between Us Ms Olive Collins 9781838530563 Books
"Was pleasantly surprised by the author's careful treatment of the sensitive topic of slavery. Very well done. I enjoyed this book immensely. Fast read, hard to put down, fantastic prose; it's obvious she spent a great deal of time researching Jamaican history. I will definitely recommend to friends."
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Tags : The Tide Between Us [Ms Olive Collins] on . 1821 After the landlord of Lugdale Estate in Kerry is assassinated, young Art O’Neill’s innocent father is hanged and Art is deported to the cane fields of Jamaica as an indentured servant. On Mangrove Plantation he gradually acclimatises to the exotic country and unfamiliar customs of the African slaves,Ms Olive Collins,The Tide Between Us,Independent Publishing Network,1838530568,LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Caribbean Latin American,Fiction / Historical
The Tide Between Us Ms Olive Collins 9781838530563 Books Reviews :
The Tide Between Us Ms Olive Collins 9781838530563 Books Reviews
- Historical fiction bursting forth from the fertile fields of North Kerry in Ireland across the huge and inhospitable North Atlantic ocean, to the sunny and equally fertile island of Jamaica and back again over a century and a half later.
This is a big book, well researched and well written in a very easy but gripping style by a young Irish writer. The family dynamic running through the story makes for addictive reading. The highs and lows of indentured servants and slaves moulded by the unremitting sun, human passion and violent beatings.
Sun, lots of sun, sweat and sugar in all it's forms.
It opens a historical pouch that has been mostly untold. An Irish slave? Who would have thought it. And thousands of Irish slaves? Well, Cromwell himself, to legitimize the havoc he caused in Ireland, used the old religious chestnut to substantiate the genocide and redistribute the overpopulated, awkward and slovenly peasants
From Ireland to Jamaica ............ out of the frying pan and into the fire.
My only moan, and that is a feeble one, is a missing epilogue reference page - to save the reader going back to see the relationships of strange sounding names.
If she brings out another tome, I'm going for it. - Was pleasantly surprised by the author's careful treatment of the sensitive topic of slavery. Very well done. I enjoyed this book immensely. Fast read, hard to put down, fantastic prose; it's obvious she spent a great deal of time researching Jamaican history. I will definitely recommend to friends.
- Full of passion, pain and reality. Historical novels like this one need to be believable and ring true to the times and locations. The Tide between us delivers both, plus the chracters are staunchly three dimensional. An entertaining and satisfying read for both history buffs as well as those intrigued by human nature.
- Bought two copies as gift. One from UK for Ireland and one from US for Jamaica. The last sentence on every page was missing in both books!
I read the book on kindle and enjoyed it, so this was disappointing. - The first half of the book was great. The second half kind of dragged. As a person of Caribbean descent I could relate to some aspects of the story. Would definitely recommend
- I voluntarily reviewed this ARC is courtesy of Poolberg Press and Library Thing.
The story is of two eras, both revolving around the Irish people (many were children, as is the case in how the novel begins); in this book the English landowner on Lugdale Estate in the mid 1800s is looking for an excuse to punish the Irish. Art O’Neill witnesses his father’s hanging and then, along with a number of other boys, is put on a ship bound for an unknown destination. Before the landowner leaves for his new home, however, he is cursed “May you and your heirs die by the hand of your own offspring.†They land in Jamaica as indentured servants on a sugar cane plantation. Being white, Art is a step higher on the ladder than the black African slaves, but he lives with them and considers them his friends. He catches the eye of an old freed slave and is made part of the garden work crew which gains him access to the goings-on of the English family, allowing the author to provide us information from several points of view.
The novel pauses at times to detail Art’s experiences with the white family, his slave friends, and his evolving hate for the English who sent him away from his beloved Ireland. Art’s hate becomes his focus when the old master dies and his heir comes to take over; Art recognizes Blair Stratford-Rice, who had his father hung, and begins plotting how he might seek revenge.
The novel picks up its pace and Art grows into manhood, fathering several children along the way with black slaves with whom he fell in love. His first daughter, Addy, is the light of his life. She is lost to him early when her mother is killed after multiple runaway attempts, but Art works to find her and eventually she returns to the plantation. In later chapters she grows to childbearing age and bears Blair’s son. Blair needed an heir, and so the boy lives in the big house. That is, until Blair takes a wife who finally conceives a boy. This becomes the key event of the novel (although I did not realize it until the last quarter of the book).
The author skillfully makes me feel I was part of the plantation life, part of Art’s longing for justice, and reminds the reader how the superior-minded ruling white class took the self-respect from the slaves. Art’s last wife bore him a son, Leon, when Art was 69 years old. Leon’s story takes up a good portion of the middle of the book. One of his sons is a victim of slave trading; the trader is a shockingly close family member which sets up another string in this complicated yet engrossing story.
The second part of the book returns the reader to Lugdale Estate in 1991. We are introduced to Yseult, 81 years old, her daughter Rachel, and crotchety Aunt Lydia who was Blair’s wife. I was a bit confused by this second group of people because I did not figure out their relationship to the O’Neill family, although we learn through flashbacks that Yseult became friends with Mary, who would eventually marry Leon O’Neill. The author included a subplot about the unearthing of a skeleton beneath an old tree. The investigators also found an old gold coin. Payment for work done long ago? Payment for a killing? And who was the skeleton? All these questions help the pieces and people of past and present come together.
I was not sure how Yseult fit into the story at first. She is unhappy in the 300-year-old house and with her very modern daughter whose plans include turning it into a boutique hotel. This part of the novel at times confused me; there were unannounced flashbacks so that I wasn’t sure who was where, when. However it is the only objection to the compelling saga and I will forgive. As Yseult cleans out closets, she burns papers and evidence of her childhood time in Jamaica; the reader learns information that, when it all came together for me, made me say “What?! Oh how did I not see that?†I love the end of the book for helping me piece things and people together, and I loved the beginning of the book with the establishment of key characters and their passions. This is a book I will read again, and probably again. - Well researched, gripping epic family drama
I really, really enjoyed this detailed, well-researched sweeping family drama that carries us through a little known facet of Irish history.
In her second novel, Olive Collins deals with the often hidden reality of the Irish in the Caribbean during the slave era. While we may know that Irish peasants were often transported to British overseas dominions as punishment for minor crimes, or given assisted passage out from Ireland in order to free up the landlord's estates from his impoverished tenants, Olive Collins does not shrink from the less often discussed topic of how the Irish, when given half a chance could be cruel and racist and abusive to those worse off than them in the strict hierarchy of the times.
In this case the protagonist of The Tide between Us is transported to Jamaica and after 14 years of indentured servitude has the opportunity to gain his freedom, and the story proceeds to get really interesting from there.
The plot is detailed and has twists and turns galore. And the writing is spare and elegant. a really satisfying read.
I really enjoyed Olive Collins's first novel The Memory of Music, which is also a sweeping epic family story covering a hundred years, and this, her second, is even better. I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.
