The “hook” of the story is the faint and ambiguous trace of an “East Indian” named Tony, who arrived at the settlement of Jamestown in the United States in 1635. That was 16 years after the first African slaves were brought there and 13 years after the infamous Jamestown Massacre. In those days, the distinction between slaves and servants, willing colonists and homeless conscripts, was quite blurred, and Tony had to eke out his existence in the uneasy shadow between the real slaves and the “free” blacks of all kinds who had come to live precarious lives in this new old land. Moreover, he is the wrong kind of Indian.
Charry manages to piece together the rather scant historical facts into a gripping story. It begins in medias res: Tony is about to reach Jamestown when a dark-skinned witch is tried and hanged on board the ship. This trauma does not bode well for Tony’s new life, and he remembers his long journey from Mylapore to Virginia via London and wonders what horrors or joys might await him in this new land.
Wild stories about America circulate among his fellow passengers, but he largely ignores them because he knows how white people talk about his own country. He makes friends with the predominantly white passengers and is lucky enough to work as an indentured servant with two other boys he met on the ship.
What follows is a period in which Tony must adjust to the misery and harshness of his new life while navigating the culture and protecting himself from the many dangers that now threaten him, from hurricanes to violent overseers. He is smart and strong, and eventually wins a wife, a career, and a new home. This is good and believable, but don’t expect Toni Morrison-style fireworks. Although race plays a role in the book, it is merely part of the environment, like malaria and superstition. Charry is not trying to score polemical points in the story or wring our souls out. That is probably a good thing.
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