The bizarrely appropriate cover art that first drew me to this book

It’s been a while since I’ve had the funds to travel further than the next city, and while I hope that changes soon, there certainly aren’t any immediate plans that look like reality. So I’ve switched tactics, and now am reading books that make me feel like I’m traveling and experiencing more exotic locals. December Heat, a murder mystery set in Rio, Collapse by Jared Diamond to explore some ancient and modern civilizations, and to remind me that I should at any rate reduce my carbon footprint. But by far the most successful, in terms of strangeness, believability, and eeriness, all in a very exotic local, is A High Wind in Jamaica.

I found this book randomly at a second-hand bookshop and bought it on a whim, never having heard of it before. It was written in 1929 by Richard Hughes, a Welshman, and was a controversial work of its time. And it turned out to be an excellent book; thoroughly unsettling and dysfunctional, yet weirdly realistic in its portrayal of its child protagonists.

The Bas-Thornton children, John, Emily, Edward, Rachel and Laura, and the neighbouring children Margaret and Harry Fernandez are put aboard a ship bound for England for their own safety after their expat Jamaican home is destroyed by a hurricane. Emily is much more impressed with the minor earthquake she experienced the day before, and much more upset over the death of the family cat than with the destruction of their house or the separation from their parents. The parents hopes for their safety are soon dashed however, for the children’s ship is captured by pirates and the children soon find themselves the unwanted guests on a pirate ship.

Much of the book simply follows the children as they pass their makeshift life aboard the pirate ship, highlighting all the while their disconnect from the real world. They are preoccupied with their dolls made of kitchen spoons, with the fun of sliding down the deck in their underwear and with winning the attention of the captain and first mate; the accidental death of John is hardly noticed and never spoken again.

Indeed, the children’s innocence is revealed not to be something precious or to be idealized, but something that when combined with adults preconceived notions about children, can be destructive. Parents, lawyers, and adult passers-by who play a role in Hughes’ novel all view the innocence of the children as sacred, and therefore the perceived crimes of the pirates inexcusable; even the pirates themselves act within acceptable boundaries. Yet the children themselves pass their lives in oblivious amorality.

What began as a casual read soon revealed itself to be an eerie, violent and poetic book that resonates with the force of the titular high wind. Part of me feels it should be re-released with a fanfare and accompanying motion picture; another part of me would like to keep it as the strange, surprising little-known classic in the second hand bookshop.