Marc Royer is a prosperous middle-aged businessman on the French Caribbean island of Saint Boniface. He has never married, preferring to visit his long-time mistress, Marie, whenever the mood strikes. One day he meets Liana, a beautiful young black woman, and decides he must have her. He strikes a deal with her mother to marry Liana. Liana naively imagines her new life as a “white wife,” but quickly learns her status makes her an outsider in both the white and black communities. To fill Liana’s days, Marc arranges for Pierre, a young teacher recently arrived from France, to tutor her. Pierre offers Liana respect she does not receive from Marc, and their relationship predictably becomes romantic. Marc spends his time oscillating between jealousy and denial, but is so focused on building his business empire that the couple gets way away with quite a lot right under Marc’s nose. However, as the island finally wakes up to World War II being waged miles away, Pierre is conflicted, feeling he should return to France to fight for his country. Both Marc and Pierre have good intentions to take care of Liana while furthering their goals, but ultimately they exercise the inherent power of their race and class, and Liana pays the price. It’s a sad story, well told, with lessons that transcend the setting and time period. ( )

I was most pleasantly surprised by this novel. A moving story of a young mulatto girl taken as a mistress, and then married by a wealthy white man on a French Caribbean island cut off from the rest of the world by World War II. It's really the classic Pygmalion tale in an exotic setting, very well told. Despite the cluelessness of the men who decide Liana's fate without consulting her wishes, their characters are not entirely unsympathetic. Sometimes, they ALMOST get the notion that their creation has feelings, although what to do about that is beyond their comprehension.

A quote: "Two men came in one day with a five hundred pound mako. It was amazing that two men in a skiff, using a handline, could have fought and killed that monster...He loved to fish too; he knew that beautiful harsh wonder of a man in a small boat alone on the sea." This book was written while Gellhorn was married to Hemingway, but about 10 years before the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. ( )