The Pirate's Daughter [Hardcover]

Margaret Cezair-Thompson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2007

In 1946, a storm-wrecked boat carrying Hollywood's most famous swashbuckler arrived dramatically in Jamaica, and the glamorous world of 1940s Hollywood converged with that of a small West Indian society. After a long and storied career on the silver screen, Errol Flynn spent much of the last years of his life on a small island off of Jamaica, throwing parties and sleeping with increasingly younger girls. Spanning two generations of women whose destinies become inextricably linked with the Hollywood star, The Pirate's Daughter tells the provocative history of a vanished era, of uncommon kinships, compelling attachments, betrayal, and atonement in a paradisal, tropical setting. May, the illegitimate daughter of Errol Flynn, belongs neither to the emerging black nation of Jamaica nor to the white, expatriate society on the island. Her mother, Ida, romantically adventurous, dreams of a bigger more glamorous world than that of her small seaside town. For them both, trying to find the right way to live their lives is about discovering who they are and where they truly belong. As adept with Jamaican vernacular as she is at revealing the internal machinations of a fading and bloated matinee idol, in this culturally sensitive and delightful novel, Margaret Cezair-Thompson weaves a saga of a mother and daughter finding their way in a nation struggling to rise to the challenge of independence.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cezair-Thompson conjures the tragic glamour of golden age Hollywood against the backdrop of lusty, turbulent Jamaica in her dual generational coming-of-age saga. Ida Joseph is 13 years old when Errol Flynn is nearly shipwrecked off the coast of her hometown of Port Antonio in 1946. Flynn instantly loves Jamaica and, eager to find a refuge from stateside scandal, purchases an island across from the port. Navy Island becomes the setting for his glittering parties, movie projects and affair with Ida in her senior year of high school. Flynn refuses to take responsibility for the resulting child, May, and after trying to make a go of it in Jamaica, Ida leaves May and heads to New York City, where she marries a wealthy baron friend of Flynn's who purchases the island after Flynn dies. May grows to adulthood on Navy Island, develops something more than a crush on a married family friend 40 years her senior and indulges in drugs and free love. Jamaica's tumultuous progression toward self-governance—with the violent chaos it unleashes on Navy Island—reveals certain hidden truths about the baron. For all the high drama, the reader never feels fully privy to Ida or May, but Cezair-Thompson otherwise succeeds magnificently in evoking a world distant in both time and place. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Jamaica-born Margaret Cezair-Thompson, a creative writing instructor at Wellesley College and author of The True History of Paradise, knows her native island’s physical, political, and social landscape well. Her historical epic, which spans the years between the end of World War II and the 1970s, sets a mother’s and a daughter’s coming-of-age stories against this lush country’s tensions of race and class. While most critics thought that both imagined and real characters (think Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe) sparkled, a couple accused the author of portraying self-absorbed, uninteresting stereotypes of Jamaicans; others cited a few too many plot coincidences. Neverthelessâ€"especially in May’s Treasure Cove, a book within a bookâ€"Jamaica comes alive in all its tropical splendor.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Unbridled Books; 1 edition (October 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932961402
• ISBN-13: 978-1932961409
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #918,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Caribbean

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Here it is, as promised, not tidy but true: the notes of a pirate's daughter."--Navy Island, December, 1976., October 3, 2007

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Pirate's Daughter (Hardcover)

May Flynn, the daughter of actor Errol Flynn and a beautiful Jamaican girl, has always wondered about her roots. Brought up by her mother Ida, grandfather Eli, and, for four years, a foster family, May is clever and tough from a young age. Always an outsider, she could pass for white, though she is not part of the white world of her father and maternal grandfather. Not part of the black world, either, though she considers herself "colored," she is often mocked by her dark Jamaican peers. Frequently alone, she keeps journals, filling them with stories of pirates, inspired by the films starring Errol Flynn which she sees at the local cinema.

As May discovers more about her mother Ida's life before, during, and after her birth, she creates the story of her own life, revealing it through flashbacks. When Errol Flynn's yacht was blown ashore at Port Antonio during a 1946 hurricane, her grandfather Eli drove to his aid, soon becoming Flynn's social secretary, guide, confidant, and real estate broker. Flynn finds the relaxed atmosphere of Jamaica a welcome contrast to Hollywood, where he faces charges related to his affairs with underage girls. He soon builds a palatial estate on Navy Island, off the coast, where he entertains Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Truman Capote, and a host of other Hollywood stars. It is here that Ida, May's mother, first meets Flynn when she is thirteen.

The second part of the novel follows Ida after she gives birth to May. Trying to support her family, she leaves Jamaica (and May) to find work in New York. Her return to the island several years later, and the changes she introduces into May's life, parallel some of the changes occurring on the island itself. Cuban refugees swarm to Jamaica to escape Castro's takeover. An economic downturn and, eventually, Jamaica's own independence from the British lead to competing political movements, violence, and atrocity over the next twenty years.

Filled with colorful characters, the patina of Hollywood, and the violence of political change, the novel is a fast-paced melodrama and family saga. The author's style is clean and simple as she traces lives across generations, providing enough description to enable the reader to create vibrant pictures of the action without bogging down the narrative in detail. Illness, death, financial disaster, smuggling, secret lives, ghost stories, rumors of hidden treasure, a mysterious grave, drug addiction, thwarted love, May-December romances, and shootings are among the many elements which keep the action moving--and keep the reader in a constant state of anticipation. Author Margaret Cezair-Thompson tells the story for its own sake, not to illustrate complex themes. The novel is entertaining, filled with non-stop excitement, and sure to appeal to a wide audience. n Mary Whipple

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I wasn't sure..., December 30, 2007

By 

TheSleepyReader (Midwestern USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pirate's Daughter (Hardcover)

I had a bit of trouble getting into this book at first. I am not sure why other than the fact that I disliked Errol Flynn as portrayed in this book so much that I didn't care to finish. However, as I kept plugging along I found that I began to care deeply about Ida first and then her daughter May, and finally, about many of the family and friends that surround her. I also found that I became more and more interested in the portrayal of a by-gone era and the happenings on the island of Jamaica.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the portrayal of Errol Flynn, the history of Jamaica, or any of the other stars mentioned. However, I can vouch for the fact that this was an enjoyable story that really made the island of Jamaica come alive in my mind. I am glad that I persevered with this one.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "You shake him hand, you no shake him heart.", October 11, 2007

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pirate's Daughter (Hardcover)

The tale begins with the larger-than-life presence of Errol Flynn, the great swashbuckling hero of the pirate movies, the stage set for an exotic adventure, a movie star who purchases his own private island near Port Antonio, Jamaica, building an estate and a reputation as a playboy extraordinaire, advised by a Port Antonio businessman and friend Eli Joseph. The two men share a love of conversation and grand ideas, Eli failing to notice his thirteen-year-old daughter's adoration of Flynn. Accompanying her father to Navy Island, Ida is enthralled by a luxurious lifestyle beyond her experience. By the time she is fifteen, Ida is pregnant with Flynn's child.

Given this dramatic turn of events, one might expect the movie star to do the right thing by his friend's daughter, but it is not in Flynn's nature to consider the feelings of others, still pursued by litigation for other underage conquests: "He felt as though he had some sort of moral immunity." Flynn sailing away, Ida is overwhelmed, her father in increasingly poor health. Faced with great responsibilities and few choices, Ida provides as best she can for May and Eli, but circumstances defeat her; when an opportunity to make a decent living in New York arises, Ida leaves three-year-old May and her ageing father in the hands of friends, hoping to bring them both to New York.

As many immigrants discover, America is not easily conquered; it is only through a stroke of luck that Ida encounters an acquaintance from Flynn's Navy Island days, Baron Karl von Ausberg. Karl is enchanted by the beautiful young woman and offers marriage. Eventually, Ida returns to Port Antonio as the wife of a baron, but at considerable cost to the relationship with her daughter. While Ida has attended to her husband's needs, May has suffered, taunted and chased by local children, the brunt of their jokes, the child and her grandfather long neglected in Ida's absence. How then to rectify her impulsive decisions, the illegitimate child, the long years of separation, marriage to the baron? Ida's task is daunting, perhaps impossible; the following years offer predictable challenges in a broken relationship, the sensitive May solitary and often taciturn, but diligent in writing an imaginative journal of pirates and their ribald enterprises.

Against this extraordinary background, a portrait emerges, the image shadowed by the movie star who has left two women in his dramatic wake, a daughter's imagination nurtured by the images projected on a theater screen. Everything about this story is larger-than-life, the mortal Flynn dying prematurely, his legacy a lover who still fantasizes about their romantic hours and a daughter who needs much but receives little, other than a chance afternoon with her father. From post-World War II to Jamaica's eventual independence from Britain and chaotic struggle toward self-rule, May struggles with an identity eclipsed by her mother's beauty. The Pirate's Daughter is rich with island history, the growing pains of a country, a cobbled-together family and a tormented young woman addicted to bad choices, but with an abiding love of place. Nowhere else could such a tale be told, Jamaica the lodestone for a family who dares to touch the sun and suffer the consequences, only to prove themselves capable of unconditional love for each other and their country. Luan Gaines/2007.