In SHELTER IN A HOSTILE WORLD, author Mack Little tells the gripping and complex story of Badu, living in 17th-century Africa and, later, Barbados. The narrative follows his battles against his enslavers and what happens after he escapes. The action toggles between his youth in 1628 Igboland (modern-day Nigeria) and his adulthood in 1651 Barbados.
Despite being fewer than 100 pages, SHELTER packs substantial heft into its pages with well-rendered language, action, and historically detailed descriptions of setting. Take this passage: “The distant report of musket shots and the clash of cutlasses punctuated the emergent nocturnal songs of chirping lizards and the strange, clipped cries of tree frogs. The bats in the top branches of the kapok tree squeaked, awakened from their diurnal slumber.”
Not to mention the rich characters—each of whom rings with complex and unforgettable features. Although there are unambiguously villainous people in Mack’s story, most of its cast carry heavy burdens of painful moral ambiguities—their choices laid upon them by impossible circumstances. Even the villains ring true to the story’s telling, which intrigues and compels from the opening scene—involving a ritualistic calling on the ghost-like Duppies to avenge their deaths against a white witch—to the end.
The people who inhabit the world of this novel are a colorful and diverse collective of Africans, indigenous people, white militia, smugglers, slavers, Scottish captains, and Irish indentured servants—not to mention the aforementioned Duppies, who haunt the living throughout the story. Each is distinct and sharply drawn, from Saoirse, indentured for life for the murder she committed in Ireland, to Lotanna, the one-eyed enslaver and villain of the story, to Captain Reaper and bit players Pinky-Do and Lil’ Walt, to Badu’s beloved Ekemma (whose mother Lotachuckwu is a “husband-wife”).
That unusual role is but one piece of the complex social structure that Mack builds, a complicated system of power and survival. In her deeply misogynistic clan, Lotachuckwu carves out power that is cruel and kind in equal portions. But the alternative options for the women of this village, as Mack presents—particularly in one brutal scene—are stark indeed.
In some instances, especially early in the book, dense backstories are sometimes covered in too few pages, and the reader might feel untethered. But subsequent returns to the events of the past quickly clarify the narrative’s background. SHELTER IN A HOSTILE WORLD offers thrilling action, a sharply drawn cast of characters, and a deeply satisfying ending. Mack Little is an author to follow.
The compelling narrative and rich cast of Mack Little’s slim novel SHELTER IN A HOSTILE WORLD pack a powerful punch, painting a time, place, and cast that will not soon be forgotten.
~Anne Welsbacher for IndieReader