It is always interesting to go back into the past and look at the events that have made their mark on history. It is even more interesting to look at the human aspect of those historical events. Marguerite and family have been the victims of disaster. This book purports to show how different the characters react to misfortune. All have suffered, but all can end up asking themselves: "Those who have not suffered, what do they know about life?"
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As she looked back on that day when the ferry pulled out from Little Bay in Montserrat, she wondered what had become of the other people in that boat - some fifty people all fleeing the island. All eyes were fixed on the receding landscape. Dejection and despair could be read on all the faces. For many it would be a voyage of no return. One old lady kept repeating "History repeats itself" as though she no longer had any control over her thoughts or her words; as though she herself were History. The volcano itself was History. It was only repeating itself, following the pattern it had set out several centuries before.
A sudden smile crossed Marguerite's face as she turned away from the window. She thought of her son, Jonathan, the only person she knew who had not been thoroughly traumatized by all that volcanic activity. He was excited, he said, to be going out into the big, wide, world. He had since joined the Navy and was sailing the seas. He always said when he was little: "I want to be an explorer, like Christopher Columbus."
If Christopher Columbus were to be sailing in Caribbean waters today, Marguerite asked herself, would he sail past the island of Montserrat as he had done on that Sunday morning in 1493, or would he drop anchor and go inland to see for himself the ravage that the Soufriere Hills volcano had wreaked on that little British Caribbean territory? Would he again think of the Montserrat mountain in Spain after which he had named the island, and would he implore the Black Madonna, whose shrine lies housed in that mountain, to intercede for the afflicted people of Montserrat?
The legend of the Black Madonna, as recounted by her grandmother, had always intrigued Marguerite.
About Linette Arthurton Bruno
Linette Arthurton Bruno left Montserrat, the British Caribbean island of her birth, to further her education abroad both in the United Kingdom and France. She worked at the Unesco secretariat in Paris and the United Nations Secretariat in New York before marrying and going to live on the French Caribbean island of Martinique after obtaining a Masters Degree from the Sorbonne in Paris, the subject of her thesis being the theme of Time in the works of Muriel Spark. Her first published work, "A Spark in Time", picks up the common thread in five of Muriel Spark's novels where chronology is disrupted, just as the natural order of things is often disrupted in everyday life. The themes of exile and alienation peep through the pages of that book, and it is little wonder that they have crept up again in her latest book, "Pushing through the Darkness", where elements in the lives of Marguerite and family, who have been the victims of Hurricane Hugo and the Souffriere Hills volcano in Montserrat, are brought to the fore. Linette Bruno has been sensitized to the fate of all those who have been forced into exile for one reason or another. She marries fact and fiction and shows how different characters react in the face of misfortune.
It is always interesting to go back into the past and look at the events that have made their mark on history. It is even more interesting to look at the human aspect of those historical events. Marguerite and family have been the victims of disaster. This book purports to show how different the characters react to misfortune. All have suffered, but all can end up asking themselves: "Those who have not suffered, what do they know about life?"
Linette Arthurton Bruno left Montserrat, the British Caribbean island of her birth, to further her education abroad both in the United Kingdom and France. She worked at the Unesco secretariat in Paris and the United Nations Secretariat in New York before marrying and going to live on the French Caribbean island of Martinique after obtaining a Masters Degree from the Sorbonne in Paris, the subject of her thesis being the theme of Time in the works of Muriel Spark. Her first published work, "A Spark in Time", picks up the common thread in five of Muriel Spark's novels where chronology is disrupted, just as the natural order of things is often disrupted in everyday life. The themes of exile and alienation peep through the pages of that book, and it is little wonder that they have crept up again in her latest book, "Pushing through the Darkness", where elements in the lives of Marguerite and family, who have been the victims of Hurricane Hugo and the Souffriere Hills volcano in Montserrat, are brought to the fore. Linette Bruno has been sensitized to the fate of all those who have been forced into exile for one reason or another. She marries fact and fiction and shows how different characters react in the face of misfortune.