Novel
The Sinners' Bossanova
Glenn D. Godfrey · 1987
Synopsis
In British Honduras, during the Second World War, Biddle has sent the Mermaid, Captain Hanson's boat, to sell drums of diesel to a German submarine off the southern cays, at five times the normal price. The boat is slow to return, and Biddle knows what he risks: aiding the enemy in wartime is treason, punishable by death. Around him pass Eva, an American officer named Evers and a bruja whose song gives the book its title.
Context
The novel appeared in 1987 from Cubola Productions, in Benque Viejo del Carmen, six years after independence; the Encyclopedia of the Novel regards it as the second Belizean novel. Its author, then a lawyer, returns in it to an episode that the book presents as well known in the colony: respectable merchants sold diesel fuel to the German submarines cruising in the Caribbean Sea. A travel guide recommended it to visitors as the novel to take along.
Who it is for
An adventure novel in English, sprinkled with Spanish words, for those who want a colonial Belize far from the postcards.
Prizes and reception
Bernard Ergood gave a review of it in 1991; it appears in bibliographies of Caribbean literature.