Voices Echo

Colonial Jamaica brims with longing, heat, and mystery in Graham’s historical novel.

Jamaica in the 1790s is not the island paradise that we know today. Heat, humidity, a constant drone of insects, daily storms, seasonal hurricanes, and natural disasters like earthquakes combine with the colonial problems of slavery, racism, smuggling, and political upheaval to create an ominous backdrop for an engrossing historical romance. Rhiannon Wynne Ross, an outspoken young woman “accustomed to having her opinion respected and her conversation requested,” has come to Jamaica from England to confront her husband, Albert Ross, the owner of the Fain Hill plantation. “An aging widower, he’d married Rhiannon not for companionship but for the chance of an heir—a legitimate heir,” but shortly after their wedding, he abruptly left England to return to Jamaica. While waiting for his return, Rhiannon visits her dear friend, Elisabeth Graham, in Philadelphia, where the dashing Scotsman Liam Brock helps her bid on a boardinghouse she hopes to run. The “grudging friendship” between Liam and Rhiannon grows into a mutual attraction before she leaves for Jamaica to confront her husband about financial matters. Meanwhile, Liam takes on the responsibility of escorting a young woman to Jamaica to reunite with her father, thinking that Rhiannon is on her way back to Philadelphia. However, Rhiannon has stayed in Jamaica, where she learns that her husband’s plantation is almost bankrupt. Circumstances conspire to throw Liam and Rhiannon together repeatedly, and their attraction smolders, rendered sultrily in Graham’s heated prose (“He turned his head to kiss the inside of her wrist, taking care not to scrape it over stubble, and her racing pulse shuddered past the tip of his tongue. He stifled a groan”). Background information about the protagonists is seamlessly woven throughout a well-plotted narrative; this book can be read as a stand-alone, though it is the third in a series. Written with sensitivity and remarkable insight into the lives of women, the enslaved, and other populations relegated to the margins of colonial history, this is an absorbing yarn.

Forbidden desires add to Jamaica’s steamy climate in this compelling historical romance.