It’s 1918 and Paul Poncy is living in the USA with his wife Clara and his children. His son Francis has recently died of Spanish flu. Another child is terribly sick. In his torment, Paul is reminded of the promise to God which he broke when he turned his back on becoming a priest. And he remembers the family he abandoned in Martinique some years earlier. A family, alongside many more, who would perish in a volcanic eruption. Would God be so cruel as to kill 30,000 just to teach him a lesson? Does He even exist?

If God doesn’t exist then Paul’s ghosts certainly do. They are with him everyday. Taunting him. Testing him. Yet these ghosts, both of real and imagined people, are also the things that allow him to make peace with his past and retain some kind of equilibrium. This is the crux of this intriguing novel. Based on the life story of his own grandfather, Duane Poncy and co-author Patricia McLean fuse a personal history with that of the Caribbean island of Martinique itself. The very real disaster of the eruption of Mont Pelée and the destruction of the town and people of Saint Pierre is used as the frame around which the writers cleverly investigate personal trauma alongside the wider notions of colonialism and the brutality of slavery.

GHOSTS OF SAINT-PIERRE is a clever book, blending the real and the fictional with passages of great beauty and immense sadness alongside philosophical puzzles and moral quandaries. There is some accuracy within the direct familial line, the extended family in Martinique, Paul’s “second” family after he has fled to America. The real Paul’s son did indeed die of Spanish flu. Alongside these are dramatized versions of actual people, notably numerous priests and the “Miracle of Saint-Pierre”, Ludger Sylbaris, possibly the only survivor of the eruption. And as much as authors Poncy and McLean are spinning their tale from a blend of truth and fiction, their creation Paul is doing the same within the pages of the book. Rewriting a past that troubles him. Concocting a fantasy to try to make things right. “The Adventures of Yvonne”, an adventure yarn he creates for his daughter, has the daughter he lost as its heroine. It is a bereft father, testing his faith and the heavy burden of belief, trying to will a life into existence for a child who had none.

Sure-footed prose and a well-paced plot guide readers through the mystery and misery of Paul Poncy’s life in GHOSTS OF SAINT-PIERRE, Duane Poncy and Patricia J McLean’s intelligent and engrossing work of literary fiction.

~Kent Lane for IndieReader