Fellowship & Service
A Caribbean Story
In the idealistic historical novel Fellowship & Service, a virtuous plantation owner contributes to a Caribbean island community’s moral development.
In Fabian Comrie’s spirited historical novel Fellowship & Service, a tight-knit Caribbean community comes closer together in the years following the abolition of slavery.
Sheldon is a plantation owner on St. Mark, an island in the Caribbean Sea. In the late 1830s, he hires several indentured servants to run his farm and homestead, all while declaring that he deplores the institution of slavery. Then Sheldon adopts a biracial orphan and decides to raise her as his own, despite his wife’s resentment. His love for the girl, as well as his embarrassment after the local newspaper calls out his hypocritical lack of activism, inspires Sheldon to advocate for literacy among girls and ex-slaves on St. Mark.
Over the next two decades, Sheldon funds schools, a hospital, a railroad, and several local businesses. His community becomes a place that can sustain a diverse, peaceful population. But when a new, wealthy governor takes over the island and threatens to reintroduce slavery to it, the community is divided. Sheldon is pitted against his selfish adult son, Theodore, in the process.
The book’s first few chapters read like essays; in function, they set the historical stage, establishing facts about the mid-1800s Caribbean setting. Details about when and how slavery started and ended in the area are shared. The narration shifts with its straightforward introduction of Sheldon, after which linguistic flourishes are introduced. Still, the book’s progression is choppy and marked by agreement errors. At times, vibrant images of St. Mark and its agricultural landscape push through its messiness.
The book’s characterizations are forceful: people announce their intentions and relate their opinions in direct terms, though with minimal emotion and in voices that are indistinguishable from one another’s. Some of their exchanges are unrealistic, as with the long-winded story of how a woman met her child’s father that she tells just after giving birth and just before dying. Peoples’ beliefs drive their actions and words; their personalities and relationships remain vague, though. Morality is the focus of most conversations. But because ethical discussions are placed at the heart of the book, the story is without sufficient tension to sustain interest. Even events like the opening of a hospital prompt new moralizing and little action.
Further, the book draws black-and-white comparisons between good and evil, leaving no room for gray. Sheldon is presented as a good man because he treats his indentured servants well, with his peers calling him an “exception” among despicable plantation owners who put profit above their workers’ dignity. And an entrepreneurial woman sees her business of helping pregnant girls sell their babies into servitude as a good deed because it saves the babies from abortion. The book’s optimistic stance on human nature sometimes also comes at the expense of realism, as when a medical doctor gives helpful but anachronistic nutritional advice to a patient, and when the citizens of St. Mark prove able to unite against abuse and corruption with ease.
In the informative historical novel Fellowship & Service, a plantation owner contributes to a Caribbean island community’s moral development.
Reviewed by
Aimee Jodoin
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
