Island Beneath the Sea

This novel by Isabel Allende is quite different from most of her novels that I've read - there's really no mysticism to it - but it's really very good. It's the story of Zarite (called Tete), from her days as a young slave girl on Sainte-Domingue (now Haiti) to her emancipation and life as a free woman in New Orleans.

We follow Zarite's life from the age of about 11, a few years before the slave rebellions in the late 1700's, to about age 40 in New Orleans, several years prior to the civil war and abolition. She has a difficult life - she is a slave for most of it, after all, though luckily not in the cane fields - but she also makes some good friends along the way and finds love and a family.

I have to say I knew pretty much nothing about how Haiti came into being, and that was an interesting part of the book. Also interesting was the attitude of the New Orleans Creoles towards "Americans", and their distaste after the Louisiana Purchase of being forced to speak English. There was also a rigid caste system in both Sainte-Domingue and New Orleans among upper class whites, working class whites, and free people of varying amounts of color.

The best part of the novel for me, though, was the personal relationships between Tete and her friends and family, and the way she used what she learned, in combination with her spirituality, to overcome setbacks and create a good life for herself and her children.

Island Beneath The Sea: A Novel