READ
If you’re
old enough to remember Ronald Reagan’s presidency, you’re likely to recall when
the United States invaded the Caribbean island country of Grenada. The war
lasted only a few days before the U.S. declared victory, and I don’t think I’ve
seen anything in the news about Grenada since.
With that as
my only frame of reference, I was looking forward to learning more about
Grenada for this blog post. I was very happy to find a Grenadian author who had
written a thriller, which is my favorite literary genre. The Bone
Readers, by Jacob Ross, is set on the fictional island of Camaho, which
appears to be very much like Grenada. In fact, the book’s narrator talks about
how the two hundred square miles of island territory had been enough “to
frighten the hell out of Ronald Reagan in my mother’s time; enough to have him
put an aircraft carrier on our horizon and launch Blackhawk helicopter gunships
and F-16 bombers to pound us into the sea.”
But The Bone
Readers isn’t about Grenada’s war with the United States. It’s about a
young boy, the illegitimate son of the police commissioner and his servant, who
grows up to become a police detective himself. Michael “Digger” Digson, a
recent high school graduate with no prospects, witnesses a murder, and his
powers of observation help the police identify almost all the killers. He is
offered a job by the detective superintendent, which he accepts in spite of his
negative view of the police.
One reason
Digger agrees to go to work as a police detective is to try to uncover the
truth of his mother’s death. She left the house when Digger was eight years old
to attend a rally protesting the rape and murder of a schoolgirl by the son of
a high-ranking official. During the protest, an order was given for the police
to shoot into the crowd, and Digger’s mother was killed. However, her body was
never recovered.
While Digger’s
mother’s case is always on his mind, the plot centers around a cold case of a
young man who disappeared a few years previously. Investigating the case leads
Digger and Miss K. Stanislaus, who has been brought in to help, into dangers they
couldn’t have predicted.
The Bone
Readers kept me interested and entertained. If I have one complaint, it’s
that the author’s use of the local patois made the dialogue a little hard to
interpret from time to time. Aside from that, I really enjoyed this book. A
press release from the publisher says that The Bone Reader is the first
book in the author’s Camaho Quartet. The other three don’t appear to have been
written yet, but when they come out, I’ll be eager to read them.
COOK
I’m afraid
Grenada got short-changed in the cooking portion of this post. I had wanted to
make potato pone, a type of sweet potato pudding that was mentioned a couple of
times in The Bone
Readers, but the recipe called for an ingredient I couldn’t find. I have
family coming for a visit this week, and I really wanted to get this blog done
before they arrive, since I won’t be doing any blogging while they’re here. So
I just started looking for the easiest Grenadian recipe I could find.
What I found
was a recipe on the Simple Grenadian Cooking website for fried
plantains with only two ingredients – oil and plantains. These tasty little
morsels couldn’t have been any easier to make, and they were a delicious little
snack.
GIVE
There are no
projects listed for Grenada at GlobalGiving.org, so I searched the Internet and
found PLAN!T Now, which “encourages people and communities to access the tools
they need before severe weather strikes to reduce the loss of life and
destruction caused by storms.”
This
organization was originally formed as the Grenada Relief Fund after the island
was devastated in 2004 by Hurricane Ivan. By focusing on preparedness, PLAN!T
NOW hopes to mitigate the effects of future storms. More information about this
organization is available at http://www.planitnow.org/.
NEXT STOP:
GUATEMALA
