Land of Love and Drowning

Land of Love and Drowning, by Tiphanie Yanique, 358 pages

This book is a little hard to describe without just telling the whole story, It's about sisters and family. It's about the sea, and how it can give and take away. It's about islands, and island life, and how that can be different than living on the mainland. It's about sovereignty and how an island can be under the rule of one country one day and another country the next. It's about secrets and shame and how the refusal to tell or tell completely can change someone's life utterly. It's also a little bit about magic. Owen Arthur Bradshaw is a cargo ship captain living in the Virgin Islands at the time they switch rule from Denmark to the United States. His wife, Antoinette, gave up a lobsterman from her small atoll of Anegada to be with him and to have a shot at a finer life. Their daughter, Eeona, is already a beauty for her age, so beautiful that she's bound to make men leave their wives and worship her once she's older. Into all of this comes Anette, their red haired second daughter, a daughter Antoinette was determined not to have and tried everything to keep from having. Soon, the looming specter of financial ruin due to Prohibition may or may not have caused Owen's ship to run into the treacherous coral reef surrounding Anegada, sinking it and killing him. Not long after, Antoinette also dies, leaving Eeona to raise Anette with the only caveat that she keep Anette away from Esau. Like all good magical realism, Land of Love and Drowning is filled with moments where things are a little too good to be true, where myths like the Duene that Antoinette tells her daughters can become real, and where island magic is an accepted part of life. I really enjoyed how Tiphanie Yanique switched narrators to tell the story. We get chapters from Eeona and Anette, each with their own distinctive voices, and when it's just the narrator, Yanique leaves little hints that it's the island women telling this story. It's a fantastic story imbued with a deep sense of island life and history that is sure to satisfy.