About this item
Highlights
- Conch Pearl weaves a cross-cultural narrative that reveals the damages wrought by colonialism and explores the healing power of art.
- Author(s): Julie E Justicz
- 324 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
About the Book
Conch Pearl is a cross-cultural revealing the damages wrought by colonialism art's healing power. A lonely twelve-year-old, seeks friendship; an American grifter provides companionship but demands a far more costly return.
Book Synopsis
Conch Pearl weaves a cross-cultural narrative that reveals the damages wrought by colonialism and explores the healing power of art. Dede, a lonely twelve-year-old English expat, seeks friendship from various island residents. An American grifter provides Dede with companionship but demands something far more costly in return. When Dede impetuously flees Grand Bahama Island on a sailboat during a summer storm and washes up on a tiny cay, she is forced to confront realities she's tried to forget, and to make decisions that will change the course of several lives. In Conch Pearl innocence battles traumatic shame, and truth finally finds expression in the tongue of the ocean.
Review Quotes
"Conch Pearl grabbed me like a riptide. The plight of young Dede is so immersive and thrilling that I wanted to devour the book in a single sitting, yet the prose is so beautiful and visceral that I wanted to luxuriate over every delicious sentence. The solution, of course, was to race to the ending to find out what happened, then read this marvelous gem again."-Abby Gerri is the author of The Wildlands, The Lightkeepers, The Last Animal, and a forthcoming short story collection, The Body Farm. "Three lives collide with tragic results in this propulsive and transporting novel. At the center of Conch Pearl is Dede, a twelve-year-old British girl, dragged to Grand Bahama Island by her mother who finds work and love in a casino. Dede, unsupervised, lonely, yearning for home, seeks companionship from two neighbors, Ethel, an aloof Bahamian woman, and the too-friendly handyman Johnny McGuinn. Justicz's profound insights into her characters and her unfolding of the risks they must face are stunning. Conch Pearl is a grip-you-by-the-throat page turner about love and survival, that is profound and deeply satisfying. This is a novel you won't forget."-Lynn Sloan is the author of two novels, Midstream and Principles of Navigation, and the story collection This Far Isn't Far Enough.