Tag: authorreviewpile

#BookReview The Tide Between Us by Olive Collins

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The Tide Between UsAbout the Book

1821: After the landlord of Lugdale Estate in Kerry is assassinated, young Art O’Neill’s innocent father is hanged and Art is deported to the cane fields of Jamaica as an indentured servant. On Mangrove Plantation he gradually acclimatises to the exotic country and unfamiliar customs of the African slaves, and achieves a kind of contentment. Then the new heirs to the plantation arrive.

His new owner is Colonel Stratford-Rice from Lugdale Estate, the man who hanged his father. Art must overcome his hatred to survive the harsh life of a slave and live to see the eventual emancipation which liberates his coloured children. Eventually he is promised seven gold coins when he finishes his service, but he doubts his master will part with the coins.

One hundred years later in Ireland, a skeleton is discovered beneath a fallen tree on the grounds of Lugdale Estate. By its side is a gold coin minted in 1870. Yseult, the owner of the estate, watches as events unfold, fearful of the long-buried truths that may emerge about her family’s past and its links to the slave trade. As the body gives up its secrets, Yseult realises she too can no longer hide.

Format: ebook, paperback (372 pages) Publisher: Poolbeg Press
Publication date: 7th September 2017 Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Tide Between Us on Goodreads

My Review

In the first and, for me, the most powerful part of the book Art O’Neill sets out to record, for the benefit of his children, the story of his life from the time he was transported to Jamaica from Ireland and forced to work as an indentured servant on the Mangrove Plantation. The author vividly depicts the cruelties and privations of the voyage and Art’s sense of unfamiliarity with his new environment. The book also exposes the harsh conditions and savage treatment meted out to slaves on the plantation.

Over the next decades Art experiences love, marriage and the birth of children but also the loss of loved ones. He is witness to turbulent events on the island, including slave rebellions and outbreaks of disease. Rising to the position of overseer, he faces moral dilemmas over the treatment of slaves under his control. And, underlying it all, is the ever present hatred he bears towards the Stratford-Rice family that at times seems to provide the only meaning in his life.

In the second part of the book, the reader sees events from the point of view of Yseult and, briefly, from the point of view of her daughter, Rachel. Yseult and Rachel have a rather strained relationship with Yseult dismissive of Rachel’s ideas for developing the Lugdale Estate. I’ll confess I found Yseult an unsympathetic character and difficult to warm to. Interspersed with events following the discovery of the skeleton are Yseult’s memories of her childhood including her friendship with Mary O’Neill whose family owned land adjoining Lugdale.

Eventually the unfinished stories of the characters from the first part of the book are brought to completion, revealing a tale of secrets, revenge and feuds continuing down through the generations.

You can read my earlier interview with Olive here in which she talks about the inspiration for The Tide Between Us, the historical background to the events in the book and her view that we must examine the past in order to fully understand the present.

I’d like to thank Olive for providing me with a review copy of The Tide Between Us and apologize for the length of time it’s taken to reach the top of my review pile.

In three words: Dramatic, authentic, powerful

Try something similar: Sugar Money by Jane Harris (read my review here)

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Olive CollinsAbout the Author

Olive Collins grew up in Thurles, Tipperary, and now lives in Kildare.

For the last fifteen years, she has worked in advertising in print media and radio. She has always loved the diversity of books and people. She has travelled extensively and still enjoys exploring other cultures and countries.

Her inspiration is the ordinary everyday people who feed her little snippets of their lives. It’s the unsaid and gaps in conversation that she finds most valuable.

Connect with Olive

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Further Tales From My TBR Pile

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bookshelf
Today I’m once again directing the spotlight on a particular section of my To Be Read Pile – review copies I’ve received from authors.

I’m currently closed to review requests but before I pulled up the drawbridge (so to speak) I’d already amassed quite a few books sent to me for review by authors.  I’ll confess I’ve not made as much progress as I would have liked in reducing my author review pile and some of the books have been languishing there for quite some time.

Therefore, in highlighting a few of the books in my author review pile, I’m hoping to assuage my guilt at the length of time they’ve been there, reassure their lovely authors that I haven’t forgotten my promise to read and review them, and perhaps tempt other readers into adding them to their own TBR piles.

Fred's FuneralFred’s Funeral by Sandy Day

Fred Sadler has just died of old age. It’s 1986, seventy years after he marched off to WWI, and the ghost of Fred Sadler hovers near the ceiling of the nursing home. To Fred’s dismay, the arrangement of his funeral falls to his prudish sister-in-law, Viola. As she dominates the remembrance of Fred, he agonizes over his inability to set the record straight.

Was old Uncle Fred really suffering from shell shock? Why was he locked up most of his life in the Whitby Hospital for the Insane? Could his family not have done more for him?

Fred’s memories of his life as a child, his family’s hotel, the War, and the mental hospital, clash with Viola’s version of events as the family gathers on a rainy October night to pay their respects.

Getting HomeGetting Home by Wolfe Butler

It is happening again. A looming sense of doom coupled with an innate need to run plagues him, a rising darkness he cannot escape. Something is coming for Tom. He doesn’t know what, but the ominous presence is moving closer every day. Nightmares and voices haunt him until nothing in his life feels safe.

Vehement denial and copious amounts of alcohol only delay the approach, but leave Tom with missing time and strained relationships. His respectable family, empathetic girlfriend, and prestigious job—all begin to disintegrate as Tom can only watch, anchorless and increasingly adrift.

At his breaking point, the only certain solution seems to be to end it all, but a lingering instinct dares him to hold on to hope. Can Tom find the road leading to redemption? Or will the truth of the crippling flashbacks drive him to madness?

An Engineered InjusticeAn Engineered Injustice (Philadelphia Legal 2) by William L. Myers, Jr.

What if the deadliest train wreck in the nation’s history was no accident?

When a passenger train derails in North Philadelphia with fatal results, idealistic criminal defense attorney Vaughn Coburn takes on the most personal case of his young career. The surviving engineer is his cousin Eddy, and when Eddy asks Vaughn to defend him, he can’t help but accept. Vaughn has a debt to repay, for he and his cousin share an old secret—one that changed both their lives forever.

As blame for the wreck zeros in on Eddy, Vaughn realizes there’s more to this case than meets the eye. Seeking the truth behind the crash, he finds himself the target of malicious attorneys, corrupt railroad men, and a mob boss whose son perished in the accident and wants nothing less than cold-blooded revenge. With the help of his ex-con private investigator and an old flame who works for the competition, Vaughn struggles to defeat powerful forces—and to escape his own past built on secrets and lies.

Read my review of A Killer’s Alibi (Philadelphia Legal 3) – contains spoilers for Book 2