I've read a number of Hoffman's novels and they have been hit and miss but I liked this one a lot. The Caribbean setting is reminiscent of Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea. In the early 1800s Rachel grows up on the island of St. Thomas in a small community of Jewish Inquisition refugees. She dreams of going to Paris, a dream shared by her best friend and confidante, Jestine, daughter of the family servant. To save her father's business she enters into an arranged marriage with an older widower with children. On his death, everything they own, including her late father's business, goes to her husband's family. When his nephew, Frederick, arrives from Paris to claim the inheritance, it is love at first sight between the two and they go on to have a scandalous relationship. The Jewish congregation refuses to allow them to be married because the relationship is considered incestuous. They remain together and have several children to add to the children and step-children Rachel already had. Eventually their youngest son is sent to Paris to study. He ends up becoming a world renowned by the name of Camille Pisarro.
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