Barbados, 1648. The lush and deadly Caribbean paradise, domain of
rebels and freeholders, of brigands, bawds and buccaneers.
CARIBBEE is the untold story of the first American revolution, as
English colonists pen a Declaration of _Defiance_ ("liberty" or
"death") against Parliament and fight a full-scale war for freedom
against an English fleet--with cannon, militia, many lives lost--over a
century before 1776.
An assured, literate saga, the novel is brimming with the rough and
tumble characters who populated the early American colonies.
The powerful story line, based on actual events, also puts the reader
in the midst of the first major English slave auction in the Americas,
and the first slave revolt. We see how plantation slavery was
introduced into the English colonies, setting a cruel model for North
America a few decades later, and we experience what it was like to be a
West African ripped from a rich culture and forced to slave in the
fields of the New World. We also see the unleashed greed of the early
Puritans, who burned unruly slaves alive, a far different truth from
that presented in sanitized history books. Finally, we witness how
slavery contributed to the failure of the first American revolution, as
well as to the destruction of England's hope for a vast New World
empire.
We also are present at the birth of the buccaneers, one-time cattle
hunters who banded together to revenge a bloody Spanish attack on their
home, and soon became the most feared marauders in the New World. The
story is mythic in scope, with the main participants being classic
American archetypes--a retelling of the great American quest for
freedom and honor. The major characters are based on real individuals,
men and women who came West to the New World to seek fortune and
personal dignity.
Publisher's Weekly said, "This action-crammed, historically factual
novel . . . is a rousing read about the bad old marauding days, ably
researched by Hoover."
"ACTION-CRAMMED, HISTORICALLY FACTUAL ... A ROUSING READ"
-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"METICULOUS . . . COMPELLING"
--KIRKUS REVIEWS
"IT SHOULD ESTABLISH THOMAS HOOVER IN THE FRONT RANK OF WRITERS OF
HISTORICAL FICTION"
--MALCOLM BOSSE author of THE WARLORD