Title: Trouble Tree

Author: John Hill Porter

Publisher: Macmillan Caribbean

Reviewer: Barbara Nelson

'Trouble tree don' bear no blossom', Grandma Dora (Eudora Glenville) an old Bajan redleg woman, tells her young grandson, Ben Cumberbatch. "Our family is that trouble tree, and as for the blossoms - happiness and success - we haven't had much of them either."

In this 322-page book, his first work of fiction, John Hill Porter, who was born in the USA, weaves a well-crafted and thrilling story that begins with a shooting in an alley in New York. The victim, a detective in the Arson Squad of the New York Police Department (NYPD), is seriously wounded by a bullet to his head.

He is Ben Cumberbatch. Taken to Kings County Hospital he regains consciousness but has short-term memory problems. Later, he learns that his father, Nate, was mortally wounded around the same time that he was injured. Is there a connection?

action moves to Barbados

The action moves to Barbados when "half-Irish, one-quarter light-skinned, one-quarter redleg" Ben flies there to inform his relatives about his father's death. Through flashbacks to Ben's youth when he first visited the former British territory in the summers of 1969, 1970-1972, the author gently and respectfully lifts the covers off the history of the inbred redleg community there.

Most of the redlegs were poor and uneducated Scots and Irish prisoners from wars fought in England or debtors from jails. Most were sentenced to work for a landowner in the island for several years. Their fair skin burned from long hours working in the hot Caribbean sun - hence the name 'redlegs'.

The redlegs intermarried and, in some instances, had incestuous relationships because the high whites (the sons of the old wealthy class in England) would not marry them. The redlegs, on the other hand, would not marry the freed black slaves, who looked down on the redlegs, calling them backra-johnnies'.

According to Grandma Dora, the first Glenville's came to the island in the 1640s.

As an eleven-year-old, Ben found it peculiar that his Uncle Clarence "was Glenville and he was white" while his own father, Nate, "was Cumberbatch and black". His Aunt Emily, Clarence's sister, an albino, was white like "a duppy".

Ben learned that his Grandma Dora was her father's only child and heir to the property that could only pass to the first male heir in each succeeding generation. That fact would later cause serious problems in the family.

As Ben relates the story of the summer holidays he spent on the east coast of Barbados, the author describes the exquisite beauty of the island - the sugar cane fields, the roar of the heavy, pounding surf, crashing onto the windy coral cliffs, and how "the sun, shining through the drops of water, produced a tiny rainbow".

In the summer of 1972, Ben, against his grandmother's orders, wanders off to the Savannah Great House and gets caught by two white men, one of them a peculiar short, pudgy creature with "a strange smile" who opined that Ben "would do nicely". Luckily for Ben, he escaped before he could experience what the man, whom he later learned was Edgar Mount, master of the Savannah Plantation, meant by that comment. Later in his life he saw clearly what he had escaped.

serious crush

It was that same summer that young Ben developed a serious crush on pretty Annie Shorter, the sister of his friend Oliver, a young teenager who spent much of his time with his uncle on his boat. Oliver and Annie lived in a very dilapidated house in Glenville village. As a grown woman Annie would play a pivotal and peculiar role in Ben's life.

Porter's story is presented in an unusual format. Instead of chapters, there are hospital notes from Kings County Hospital, from Wickham Institute (where Ben was sent to be treated by a team of specialists), Ben's Journal and Daily Reports of his experiences in New York and Barbados, after he leaves hospital.

The story is well-written and compelling. The characters are interesting and unique; the plot is complex. There are several murders, arson and deception, intertwined with greed, betrayal, sibling rivalry, love and unforgiveness. The tale, however, is effortless to read and the end dramatic and totally unexpected!

John Hill Porter studied international relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the US Peace Corps as director of public affairs in 1970 and travelled to Africa, Latin America and Jamaica. He founded his own company in Washington in 1972 and retired in 1992. Since then he and his wife have lived in Barbados.