Book Review

By Derryll White

Grisham, John (2024).  Camino Ghosts.

John Grisham is the author of 49 consecutive number one bestsellers. Indeed, he knows how to write and it is delightful to follow him as he takes his main character here, Mercer Mann, through the process.

Mercer has written a collection of short stories and two novels, the last one very well received. She is now casting around looking for a new storyline. Bruce Cable, a very successful independent bookstore owner, draws Mercer into the story of Dark Isle, a small piece of real estate on the coast between Florida and Georgia.

The author uses Mercer’s decision to write a non-fiction book on Dark Isle and its last remaining inhabitant, Lovely Jackson, to explore slavery in America. The story is gripping, going back 300 years to the brutal capture of slaves in Africa. Lovely is the last remaining ancestor of the escaped slaves that inhabited Dark Isle.

Grisham folds into this engaging social history the real problems of present-day Florida  – unbridled development and environmental destruction. He throws in some surprises which keep the plot perking.

‘Camino Ghosts’ is a very well-thought-out exploration of one of the major social issues in America today. The author does not preach or take a hard line. He simply explores the issue and leaves it to the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.  Be prepared to be emotionally moved.

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Excerpts from the novel:

FLORIDA – Florida was admitted to the United States as a slave state in 1845.  Florida had been a territory since 1821 and slavery was widespread, especially in the north, on cotton plantations and citrus farms around St. Augustine.  One of the largest landowners was Stuart Dunleavy, a roguish politician who had once been a soldier and still fancied himself a military man.  He would later get shot at Gettysburg and lose an arm.  Using bribes and connections, he had amassed huge swaths of land east of Tallahassee and grew cotton on four thousand acres. When Florida joined the Union, he owned more slaves than anyone else in the new state and boasted of having a thousand Africans toiling in his fields.

DESERTED ISLANDS – The gist of his brief testimony was that in Florida the law was clear, and had been on the books for over 60 years now.  Because of nature and occasionally because of man-made projects, shorelines, reefs, even streams and tributaries changed with time.  Small islands disappear.  Others are created.  Still others merge and split.  There were currently about eight hundred deserted islands in the waters off the coasts of Florida, and all of them were deemed, by law, to be the property of the state.

VOODOO – “Most of us educated white men scoff at the notion of a curse hexed upon the island over 200 years ago by a young African witch doctor, or voodoo priestess.  We might snicker and whisper that it’s a fantasy no reasonable person could really believe.  We’re much too sophisticated for such silliness.  Well, if that’s so, then I challenge any of my colleagues on the other side of the courtroom to take a shot.  Go down to the marina, rent a boat, take a ride across the bay, and have a stroll around Dark Isle.”

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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