Title: The Pirate's Daughter
Author: Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Publisher:Unbridled
Reviewer: Barbara Nelson

Jamaican-born Margaret Cezair-Thompson, a creative writing instructor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, tells a wonderfully entertaining fictional tale about May Josephine Flynn, the daughter of the swashbuckling movie star Errol Flynn in this 394-page book.

Errol Flynn, the darkly handsome, freewheeling Hollywood star, is really the only authentic person in the story, but the author uses her considerable talent to engage her readers in a story that spans several generations. Did Errol Flynn father a child in Port Antonio? Not that we know of, but what if he did? What kind of person would she have been and what kind of life would she have lived in Jamaica?

Cezair-Thompson, author of the widely acclaimed previous novel, The True History of Paradise, writes a story within a story about May, the imaginary daughter of the real Flynn. It begins with May looking out from the verandah on Navy Island off the north coast of Jamaica where "the lawn is overgrown and lizards have taken over the garden and the derelict tennis court". She has been writing her own story called 'Treasure Cove.

The author takes us back to "a sunny morning in 1946" when 13-year-old Ida Joseph is relishing the end of childhood at her home on Plumbago Road in Port Antonio. That same morning she "saw a picture of a man with wavy hair and a sword" in The Daily Gleaner. That man, Errol Flynn, at 40 years of age was "deep in the muck" of divorces and statutory rape cases, but still sufficiently charismatic that many young women in Jamaica were reported to faint on seeing him!

Flynn's schooner, the Zaca, is wrecked outside of Port Antonio harbour and he gets help from Ida's father, Eli Joseph. The two become friends - "I managin' him business," Eli proudly told people Flynn takes advantage of Eli's generosity. Ida is absolutely infatuated with Flynn and at 16 years old becomes pregnant for him. Meanwhile he had bought Navy Island just off the coast of Port Antonio and built a beautiful house there.

Ida was only one of the several women who included actresses and tourists that Flynn either married and divorced or had liaisons with. By the time she is ready to tell him that she is pregnant Flynn had absconded.

With consummate skill Cezair-Thompson fleshes out her story, gently touching on the issues of race and class that are so much a part of the fabric of Jamaican society. She exposes some of the experiences of Jamaican women who migrate to the United States to work and earn money.

Ida leaves her young child, May, in Jamaica. At one point she works as a nurse's aide with an old woman. She writes to her friend in Jamaica that "By day number two I realised I was not working as an aide but as a maid! One day I just couldn't take any more and I told her I didn't like being shouted at, that my name was Ida not Girl, and I was not a dog to be given her leftover food."

Intertwined with the lives of the main characters are other people - foreigners such as Nigel; an Englishman; his wife, Denise; the Baron Karl Von Ausburg.

Then there is Ida's mother, Esme, who, early in the story, thought that Ida was getting "too familiar" with the movie star. Ida's mother, known as 'Madda Oni', a bush-doctor and obeah woman; she could cure sicknesses, catch shadows and predict the future."

Flynn dominates the first part of the book. Then the limelight shifts to May and her experiences and relationships with her family and various characters - some of whom are quite unsavoury - as she develops into a young woman.

As the story unfolds the background scenery shifts as Jamaica moves into a period of change that is dominated by violence in the capital city, Kingston. Soon the violence spills over into the rural areas as the emerging nation tries to find some kind of identity.

Cezair-Thompson embellishes her story with the colourful language of Jamaican folk culture. There are great descriptive phrases in her book as, for example, when one character died - "his face had broken loose from all pain".

The Pirate's Daughter is a must-read for all, but especially for anyone who appreciates good writing, the beauty of language and takes delight in the nuances and peculiarities of our unique Jamaican culture.