Title: Fellowship & Service: A Caribbean Story
Author: Fabian Comrie
Publisher: Fabian Comrie
ISBN: 1977236979
Pages: 308
Genre: Fiction / Adventure
Reviewed by: David Allen
Hollywood Book Reviews
Fabian Comrie’s Fellowship and Service is a welcome look at those who not only endured slavery but lived to tell the tale, set against a backdrop of the gorgeous Caribbean and its diadem islands. In the telling, Comrie supplies much needed information on the commercial and human chattel history of these splendid islands. He is also author of Caribbean Stories: Land of the Fatherless)
Turns out that more than half of Caribbean populations, back in the day, were slaves or plantation workers. Slavery in the overseas colonies was officially abolished by the various European powers in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Plantation workers could become indentured servants, technically free but paying for food and board and earning measly wages as labor conscripts. Freed slaves could enter apprenticeship programs which were essentially glorified indentured positions.
Next stop: St. Mark’s, a small but gorgeous island world unto itself. St. Mark’s island, once a prosperous center of tourism, palm trees and flawless beach, is the setting.
Readers witness the up-close and personal details of life on the plantation and in the colony. Follow the life of Sheldon Shaw, plantation owner, as he manages and ministers his farm workers. Fabian Comrie’s skill is in humanizing, in bringing to blood, sweat, and tears reality, his cast of alternately doubting, dubious, questing, and often heroic characters. Historical veracity and atmosphere are triumphantly established with accompanying photos and maps.
Fabian Comrie joins the ranks of an impressive and accumulating island literature. Comrie is in good company, sharing the boards with amazing talents such as Jamaica Kincaid. The writing itself is musical, spare when it needs to be. Fellowship and Service is a necessary and long-awaited addition to our sense of ourselves, to our sense of location, to our origins. Fellowship and Service serves up the banquet of diversity in a very appealing form. Pull up a beach chair on your next Caribbean vacation, read or listen to this book, and see what you think.