Margaret Cezair-Thompson's Latest Novel, The Pirate's Daughter, Tells of Troubled Legacies

WELLESLEY, Mass. – It’s a fictional story that incorporates an all-too-real “pirate” – swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn – as one of its main characters. The Pirate’s Daughter (Unbridled Books, October 2007) by Margaret Cezair-Thompson (right) uses Flynn’s history and personality to weave a novel filled with attachments and betrayals.

“Errol Flynn is a symbol as much as a character in the novel for me,” said Cezair- Thompson, a senior lecturer in Wellesley College’s English Department. A native of Jamaica, she had heard from childhood about Flynn’s wild life as a sometime island resident. “He died when I was 3, but I remember loving the pirate movies he was in,” she said. In combination with British colonial history in Jamaica, Flynn as a character represented “the imperial wanderlust—it was interesting to me that he really lived the role he often played—he was bad, he misbehaved – he really was a pirate.”

Cezair-Thompson’s book is described as a coming-of-age saga focusing on Ida Joseph, a Jamaican teenager who falls in love with Flynn after he nearly shipwrecks off the Jamaican coast. Flynn decides to escape his scandalous stateside life and buys an islet off the Jamaican coast. There he begins a new round of glittering parties and affairs. Ida finds herself expecting, but Flynn refuses to take responsibility for the resulting child, May. The story follows May’s search for a father she never knew with the backdrop of an emerging black nation and its white, expatriate society.

Publishers Weekly notes that Cezair-Thompson “succeeds magnificently in evoking a world distant in both time and place.” The novel has been greeted warmly, with Random House recently buying the paperback rights. The Pirate’s Daughter has also been selected by booksellers nationwide as the #1 Book Sense Pick for October. Locally, Cezair-Thompson will read from her book at the Wellesley Booksmith, Central Street, Wellesley, Saturday, Oct. 13, at 7 pm.

Before writing Errol Flynn’s life into her novel, Cezair-Thompson did extensive research.

"The facts surrounding Flynn are so much more interesting than anything anyone could ever make up,” she said. “You know, like the fact that he really was caught in a storm, and his boat wrecked, and he accidentally arrived in Jamaica – that's true. And his love of Navy Island [off Port Antonio], and of Jamaica, and of the sea ...

"Of course I tried to reconstruct him as a real, living character – you know, giving him thoughts and a voice. I didn't want him to be the sort of sensational tabloid-creature he became in real life. I actually found him a sympathetic character: a person who was really struggling to find his right place in the world – and making a lot of mistakes while he was doing it."

And none of Flynn’s fictional misdeeds are out of character, she added.

Her book goes beyond the story of a collision of cultures and people.

“Probably the word ‘daughter’ in the title is the most meaningful in what I was trying to do,” said Cezair-Thompson. “The central idea that propelled me forward was the problematic identity that comes from things that are both grand and ruined. The young woman is symbolic of anyone trying to make his or her way through a troubled legacy. You ultimately have to stop grappling with all these shadows and move forward with your life.”

Cezair-Thompson left Jamaica for New York at age 19 to study at Barnard and then earn a Ph.D. at the City University of New York. In 1999, she published her widely acclaimed first novel, The True History of Paradise, a Jamaica-based story of a loving but flawed family. Her works of short fiction, essays and articles have appeared in Callaloo, The Washington Post, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Graham House Review and Elle. At Wellesley, she teaches literature and creative writing.

For more on her new book, go to http://unbridledbooks.com/thepiratesdaughter.html. Cezair-Thompson will conduct a wide-ranging book tour this fall. For a schedule of these events, go to www.booktour.com/author/margaret_cezair_thompson.

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