Early Reviewers

On the eve of transfer from Denmark to the United States, the Virgin Island of St. Thomas is caught in a moment of transition. Captain Owen Bradshaw is undergoing his own personal transformation. A dangerous love has turned him away from his wife and into the arms of another. His wife has her own plans and dreams to leave the languid world of the Caribbean behind, and find success and independence in New York City. Their daughter Eeona is just entering the peak of her soon to be legendary beauty and her mother is anxious to see her safely married off. But an unwanted pregnancy and a tragic shipwreck bring all the Bradshaw’s plans crashing down. Now Eeona and her baby sister Anette are left to fend for themselves, newly poor in a country that is only beginning to shed its old traditions and learn the ways of the modern world. But unwanted desires are an inherent Bradshaw trait, and each sisters must grapple with her own unholy love and hope to emerge free on the other side. An epic novel chronicling three generations of a US Virgin Islands family, Land of Love and Drowning is told in a language that evokes an entire world and way of life. This is a novel of love, magic, and nationhood, that tells the story of St. Thomas’s emergence into the modern world—and all the shifting definitions of class and race that it entailed. Lyrical, vibrant, and wholly unique, Land of Love and Drowning is a brilliant debut by a promising young writer.