The Ancestors Cry Out
It was called Repose, the great sugar plantation at the top of a hill on a lush Caribbean island, airy, open, and so high - so different from anything Marietta Jackson had ever seen in Boston. As her eyes took in the sights - overgrown, violently colored flower garden; tangled masses of bougainvillea, outrageous plumed birds; unbroken sweep of azure, green, deep-blue ocean - her mind recalled the phrase in her grandmother's letter: "always a noose which binds us more tightly into the Thaw fortunes."
And now Marietta was on Thaw property, the very place where a terrified young woman had scribbled a last, desperate letter back in 1831 pouring out her fear, as a slave rebellion mounted in ferocity, and strange native gods and bloodthirsty ghosts worked their awful magic, and a white man's murderous ambition exacted a terrible price.