Summer Reading

By Caitlin Richards

Summer is a time for sitting back and taking it easy, often with a book in hand. Whether you prefer to kick back on a beach, a boat, or in a hammock on a cool veranda, you’ll want a stack of books by your side. Here’s a selection of Caribbean themed books that has something for everyone. And you know something that’s great about books? When you finish reading yours you can swap with your friend. You might not even need to get out of your deck chair to do it.

Compass contributor Niamh McAnally has a new book, Following Sunshine, due out in September. By turns introspective, funny, and heartbreaking, Following Sunshine is a brave and honest memoir that asks for neither sympathy nor pity. McAnally tells her story — from a young girl who suffers abuse, to a young woman suffering depression, to a woman searching for herself — with humor, empathy and intelligence. For those who fight with depression, McAnally’s is a strong voice that shows for every day spent with the door locked and the curtains drawn, there can be a day in the sunshine. Read it: because it’s more than a “I dropped out and bought a boat” story, and McAnally is a tremendous and honest writer.

Following Sunshine: A Voyage Around the Mind, Around the World, Around the Heart. Niamh McAnally, Black Rose Writing, Texas, 2024. Available for pre-order now in paperback and eBook. Make Your Home Among Strangers is the compelling debut novel by Jennine Capó Crucet that explores themes of identity, belonging, and what it feels like to be an immigrant in America. Lizet, a first-generation Cuban-American, is torn between her elite Northeastern college and her mother’s downsized home in Little Havana, Miami. With her richly drawn characters, Crucet’s narrative skillfully shows the challenges of wanting to fit into multiple worlds, the complexities of families, and how to go forward without completely abandoning the past.

Read it: if you’re looking for great fiction with strong characters and you’re interested in the complexities of identity in contemporary America.

Make Your Home Among Strangers, Jennine Capó Crucet, Picador, New York, 2015, 388 pages. The Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson is a captivating historical novel set against the backdrop of Jamaica’s vibrant and tumultuous past. The story unfolds against the lush landscapes of the Caribbean, following the life of Ida, the daughter of a legendary pirate – Errol Flynn. In Ida’s words, “This is a story that could only have taken place in the tropics, where the climate draws sea rovers, pirates, and desperados from all corners of the world. They come and go, these adventurers … and they leave women behind … This is a tale of swashbucklers and of the women who were besotted with them.”

Read it: because the characters are so beautiful they’ll break your heart.

The Pirate’s Daughter, Margaret Cezair-Thompson, Random House, New York, 2007, 392 pages.

The wealthy Changoors live on a farm atop the hill in Trinidad, seemingly above the poor Saroops in every way: wealth, class, education as well as a physical hill separate these two families. But when Dalton Changoor goes missing and his wife, Marlee, begins to get nocturnal visitors who terrorize her and leave her messages demanding money, these two families’ lives become interwoven. Hans Saroop lives with his wife, Shweta, and son Krishna, in the Barracks, a ramshackle structure that houses several families, with barely more than a suggestion of walls and doors to separate them. Technically a mystery, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the other aspects of the story — romance, class struggle, a young boy’s coming of age — and forget the mystery.

Read it: for the lyrical prose and broken characters who are trying to live in two worlds but know that’s not possible.

Hungry Ghosts, Kevin Jared Hosein, Ecco, New York, 2023, 336 pages.

In 1974 22-year-old Michael Chapman Pincher found himself unemployed in London and found a job as a deckhand on the Gay Gander, a small sailboat setting out to sail the Atlantic to Antigua. “Having never sailed before, it is a crazy notion.” Fortunately, John, the skipper, was eager to get to sea and would have hired almost anyone, so Mick, John, Carola and Stryder the cat set sail. Somewhere in the Caribbean Mick lost his logbook, which is full of his hilariously told tales of the voyage. During the Covid lockdown an old girlfriend found and returned it to him, the result being Long Lost Log: Diary of a Virgin Sailor. Read it: for laughs and adventure set in a world without electronics.

Long Lost Log: Diary of a Virgin Sailor, Michael Chapman Pincher, The Lilliput Press, Dublin, 2022, 234 pages. “There’s a peculiar magic in certain flavors … they can transport you back to moments when you first savored them.” Margarita Askolskaya’s Sail, Spice & Savory Seas is more than a cookbook. Each recipe is prefaced by a story of when and how she first tasted a dish, and accompanied by beautiful photographs; some have QR code links to videos of the dishes being prepared. Globe icons at the top of each recipe page pinpoint where the recipe came from. Askolskaya offers everything from tapas to desserts and even cocktails. Reading the book delights the senses, and the recipes seem easy to follow.

Read it: to take a culinary journey around the world.

Sail, Spice & Savory Seas, Margarita Askolskaya, Google Play Books, 2023, 184 pages.

Askolskaya, writing as Margo Ask, debuts her culinary adventures in the Caribbean in an upcoming issue of Compass, with more to come.

“So much occurred in the more-than-six-year ordeal that a screenwriter … may have found it difficult to bring the full story into a coherent piece.” Charles Oldham writes about Hollywood’s attempt to make a film of the events in Ship of Blood. Unfortunately, the same can be said of his book, which starts out trying to deliver so much information that the thread of the story sometimes gets lost. It is, however, an interesting tale of mutiny, murder, legal battles, racism and justice.

Read it: if you’re a fan of history and the American legal system.