Wind from the Carolinas by Robert Wilder came to me via a resounding recommendation from my sister-in-law. She lent me her copy. This brick of a novel, at 636 pages, was a can’t-put-down read. I knew I was in for a good story by listening to her enthusiasm about it. For the past two and a half weeks I have spent hours each morning, long after my breakfast and coffee were finished, reading page after page. Retirement gives me the option to sit with a good book as long as I like, so I was happy to know I could continue reading after my last gulp of coffee and I didn’t have to pack up for work.
Because the artwork continued past the front cover to adorn the spine and back, I scanned all three parts of the cover and knit them together. In so doing, the summary of the story can be seen on the back, reproduced here in a larger font:
“A story of the old Bahamas.
“A big, bold, best-selling novel that traces the remarkable saga of one family through war and peace, love and disaster. Here is the fabulous story of the Camerons, the aristocratic Tory clan who fled the South in the wake of the American Revolution to rebuild their baronial plantations and recuperate their lost fortune in the turbulent, windswept Bahama Islands.
“Wind from the Carolinas is a gripping and powerful story of the old Bahamas that fuses adventure, passion and romance with unforgettable characters–a novel that will touch you and teach you if you live in the Bahamas, if you visit these islands, or if you ever hope to visit them.”
Six hundred pages tell the story of seven generations, starting in the late eighteen century with Ronald Cameron, a Loyalist who can’t abide living in postrevolutionary America. He left Charleston, South Carolina–known then as Charlestown–for Exuma in the Bahamas. As the summary states, the succeeding generations live through times of war such as the Cuban War of Independence and World War I, and they suffer through wartime deprivations as well as benefit from their own exploitations, such as rum-running during Prohibition. The novel reminded me of the generations of women in “…And Ladies of the Club” and how we followed them through their lives, and eventual deaths.
The cover depicts Juan Cadiz, instantly identifiable by his red sail. Juan has a reputation for being a playboy pirate, falling in love with women on every Bahamian island. The woman on the back cover appears lost in a daydream. She is Caroline Cameron, Juan’s future wife. The book promises love, passion and romance and Wilder does not skimp on that. This novel was originally written in 1964 and there is plenty of sex and strong feminist characters who are proud of their sexuality. Social mores on isolated islands did not limit women and men to abide by any particular code of conduct, and I had to remember that the author wrote this three years before the Summer of Love.
Wilder kept the action and the dialogue flowing and pages that were full blocks of text did not read at a slow pace. I noticed often that dramatic changes in action and location, and even jumps ahead in time by many years were not separated by any special formatting or symbol, or even extra spacing between paragraphs. In other words, I would be reading about the failure of another cotton crop and the following paragraph would discuss the successful sisal industry–thirty years later. This seemed like time travel to me. The author could have written a few introductory sentences of explanation at the beginning of these new paragraphs, or at least included a graphic or a symbol or a gigantic capital letter to start off the next paragraph. In every case where this occurred I had to go back and read the new paragraph over again to establish the passage of time.
Slavery was a part of the Cameron household and the slaves, as free people after emancipation, remained with the family right up until the end of the story at the time of Prohibition. The language’s worst racial epithet is used throughout the novel, as evidently over one hundred fifty years no one in the family learned that the word should never be uttered.
Some passages were priceless, and I reproduce the loathsome opinion the Bahamian Governor’s wife has of her husband:
“Lying motionless now, she listened to her husband’s wheezing snores and a feeling of helpless nausea engulfed her. His Excellency, Sir Gerald Heath, in the opinion of his young wife was a pig. He grunted and snorted in his sleep like some winded animal. Half turning, she stared at the heaving mound of his belly with disgust and wondered for the thousandth time why she had married him, this gross man who was twenty years her senior and an unbelievable bore.”
With so many generations the reader experiences the cycle of life and death of the characters, and I particularly liked the way the author wrote about the death of Robert Bruce, the son of Cameron patriarch Ronald:
“Old Robert Bruce saved them all further trouble. He died quietly in his sleep, his mind gone, unaware of where he was or the passing of the years. Because he had been, in his youth and manhood, a person of quiet consideration for others he would have been happy to know how much annoyance he had spared everyone by passing away in this unobtrusive manner.”
The book I read was a reprint by Bluewater Books & Charts from 1995. I must say, I loved the story so much yet I cannot ignore that the text was full of errors. Not as many spelling errors, thankfully, but incorrect words which always necessitated a reread. If I had read a misspelled word I would still be able to follow along, but in one case:
“Old peers and sormer squires had allied themselves with Dunmore.”
I embarked on a search in vain to find out what kind of squires sormer squires were, only to come back to the passage for the fifth time before I realized that it was a misspelling of former.
An incorrect choice of word, though spelled correctly, elicited a different reaction. In one paragraph I encountered the following:
“For a while they had said nothing. Thinking of it now she was aware it had been a strangely disturbing silence; as tough they, who has been lovers and had conceived a child between them, were uneasy in each others company.”
I counted three errors in the second sentence: tough for though; who has been instead of who had been; and each others for each other’s. The majority of the mistakes were of the tough/though variety, where another word was substituted, similar in spelling. How does this occur in publishing? Why would the text need to be reset? Another formatting gaffe was the use of hyphens without spaces instead of em dashes. I am not talking about en dashes here, no. The text employed hyphens, which in turn made all such occurrences appear as if the two words separated by them were somehow related, instead of being deliberately set apart, which is what em dashes are for. I always had to reread these passages.
In spite of all this–and the errors were plentiful, unfortunately–I cannot hold it against a five-out-of-five-star rating. Take a look at the em dashes and hyphens in the preceding sentence. Now imagine substituting the latter for the former. However, the multigenerational story was so appealing that this editorial snob can overlook these errors. I am certain that a different edition, preferably an earlier one, would be free of them.
One Response
Craig. I’m thrilled you loved this book. It was enjoyable to read your review as it refreshed my memory of when I read it and the lovely escape it provided me. I was in the Bahamas sailing long passages at this time. It soothed my restlessness on these long days and helped me appreciate the history of many of the Bahamian people. I hope I can share it with many others who will also adore the story and history of these islands. I was told when I bought the book in 2017-18 in Georgetown, Great Exuma Island that this book was mandatory reading in high school in the Bahamas.