It is one of the books I really didn’t give a fair chance the first time I opened it because I don’t like books that flash back and forth between the past and present. I don’t like movies that do either - they rather annoy me. Ghost movies are different because the ghosts are seen in present time though they lived long ago…those are more appealing to me.
However, in reading this book again with an open mind, I found I liked it better this time around. The book centers around Anna Pigeon who is stationed with the park service at the Dry Tortugas for a couple of months. Her sister sends her letters from an ancestor who spent years on the Tortugas when the fort was used as a prison.
The ancestor, Raffia and her little sister Tilly, are stationed there with Raffia’s husband Joseph who runs the place. Joseph, who Raffia had fallen out of love with sometime earlier but who stayed out of duty, was a stern task master who was quick to brutally punish anyone who disobeyed him. The man believed, as many did back then, that control could only be maintained through discipline and hard-handed authority.
In the end, Joseph does a humane act for an old friend which costs him everything short of his life. Raffia also loses big due to Joseph’s decision and dire mistakes of her own. Their fate is as predictable as the fate of those in the present day part of the story. I mean, how could it not be? We all seem to like our stories summed up and parroting a controlled ending that is so lacking in our lives. We like our characters tucked nicely into bed with lollipops probably because it provides us with some semblance of order in our daily chaotic world. ‘If our characters live happily ever after, maybe we can too’ - some seem to irrationally reason. I’m not knocking it - I like my stories to make sense too and the characters to live for another great, though improbable, adventure.
Seeing the Dry Tortugas was always on my list of places to visit when I was in Florida but I never got around to going out there. Between Florida and the Tortugas is the 1715 treasure fleet shipwreck that Mel Fisher found before his death - I always wanted to boat over the site just to say I had.
Anyway, the book has nothing to do with the shipwreck but the history of the Tortugas which was almost as captivating. I had read about the Tortugas before - the history - but Barr makes it come alive in her intriguing story. She has a way of making me want to charter the next plane to visit the places she writes about. Well, all but the cave one - forget that.
Some day I will make it out to the Dry Tortugas and even to Isle Royale. Instead of dry history books explaining the history at each locale, I think I’ll pack Barr’s Anna Pigeon to show me around.
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