October 25, 2010

Review: Receive me Falling - Erika Robuck



"Every slave story is a ghost story"
What I have in hands is not an easy task, since I'm here to tell you about this wonderful book called Receive me Falling which was sent to me by the author Erika Robuck. The book was published in the USA, in 2009.

First off: do NOT read the summary on the back cover. The first paragraph, ok, but after that, you get MAJOR spoilers. They don't ruin the story, but's kind of a bummer to have things told that way.

Let's move on. It's a historical fiction, with alternating chapters, one story is set on the Caribbean island of Nevis, during the 1800's and another during the current time.

The contemporary story is Meghan's, a rich girl, that works with politicians and is about to get married. At the day of her engagement party, her parents die and, a little after, she finds out they own a property in Nevis, a plantation house, a very large piece of land, that used to be a sugar cane plantation so she decides to call off the wedding and go there, still in shock over her parents' death.

The other story is about Catherine Dall's life, who used to live on that same plantation over the 1800's (early 1800's) with her dad, Cecil Dall and many slaves (up to 202 slaves). One day, a man and his son get to the island, two abolitionists, to investigate the life of slaves there, but they hid the true purpose of their trip saying they intended to start a sugar cane farm on a nearby island.

It's a troubled period in time, where USA and England already started banning slavery on their main lands, but not on the "Great Empire", with older people refusing to accept, but the younger ones already see that that kind of work won't last long, in addition to some, like Catherine, who also see how cruel that is.

I don't want to tell you much about it, since I keep feeling I'm spoiling the story - it's a historical romance, if I tell you the storyline, there isn't much left. But I can tell you Catherine is passionate and captivating. She really tries and does whatever is possible within her position to try to help and please everyone, several times ignoring herself, even if that's not enough.

Meghan is a "right" girl, from a rich family, loved, pollitically correct, does her charity works and works for a politician because, despite having the family's money and don't really need to work, she wants to help the world. But when her parents die, she gets into a shock, goes to Nevis and gets obsessed with the property Eden and it's misteries, the story that seems to be lost and some weird things that happen in the house.

What really bothered me was the ending. I was sad, a lot actually, even though I know happy endings aren't ordinary in Historical Fiction. You know you feel it's going to end bad and you feel like screaming to the character "It has to be NOW, go NOW"? Yeah, that feeling. I mentioned that to the author, who, by the way, is a sweetheart and she mentioned she does want to write a sequel for the book, but just didn't do it yet - so I wait ansiously for it, I'm dying to read more of Catherine (ok, I admit it, I'm a sucker for the historical part and didn't REALLY like Meghan that much).