A historical novel that brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people in the Caribbean whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their "discovery" by Christopher Columbus in 1492
PARADISE ONCE TRACES THE AFTERMATH of the massacre by Spanish forces of the fictional Maima village in Cuba in 1513. Some believe the destruction of Maima is the result of angering the cemíes-Taíno spiritual entities-when foreign practices, contrary to the sacred laws of the Taíno, began to infiltrate the village.
Four young people who survive the massacre are unwittingly chosen by the cemíes to save a Sacred Bundle and return it to a cave in the Cauta mountain, the mythological place the Taíno are believed to have come from: Night Orchid, a young girl and the reluctant bearer of the Sacred Bundle; the young Taíno noble, Heart of Palm; Flint, whose mother is part of the "Old Ones," a remnant group of people on the islands displaced by the Taíno; and Sekou, an enslaved African born in Spain who has aligned himself with the Taíno resistance.
The four survivors start off on separate perilous paths and only learn of their roles in the sacred mission when they unite at the holy site and encounter the Maima shaman Candlewood who has orchestrated their journeys, under orders of the cemíes. But the dark shaman Shark Tooth who has sold his soul to the underworld powers has also been shadowing the travelers. Is the old and ailing Candlewood up to one last spiritual battle, the life or death struggle with Shark Tooth for the Sacred Bundle?
Restoring the Bundle to the cave as the beating heart of the nation will ensure that the Taíno never die out-their spirit will rise again, no matter how many generations in the future. The epic battle is played out at dawn on the ball court at Cauta. But the journey of the four does not end there, for as newly-made warriors, they are destined to join with others to defend the heartland as the first of the resistance fighters who will become known in history as Cimarrones or Maroons. Senior's exquisitely crafted historical fiction authentically evokes the spiritual heart of the Taíno people in this love song to the Caribbean.
Olive Senior's Paradise Once is a powerful historical novel that vividly portrays a crucial period in the lives of the Taíno people. Senior's work weaves history and mythology, capturing the genesis and heart of Caribbean culture and showcasing her incomparable talent.
-Edwidge Danticat, author of Krik? Krak!
In Paradise Once, Olive Senior achieves what no other Caribbean novelist has done before-capture in a poignantly detailed story the human and environmental catastrophe of the early years of the Columbian encounter. Exquisitely researched and steeped in the language and worldview of the Taíno people, this is a historical novel like no other, one grounded in Senior's complete immersion into a world just becoming aware of its imminent disappearance, a world she fiercely and vividly brings back to life in its richness and magic.
-Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, author of Creole Religions of the Caribbean
Olive Senior gifts us an incisive view of our Taíno world at contact. I welcome this emerging literature . . . we need it.-José Barreiro (Hatuey), author of Taíno
Senior is particularly deft at exploring social class, maternal terrain, and distance. The territory she writes about could not interest this reader more . . . Senior skillfully depicts the space between mother and children. . . What's remarkable at times is Senior's subtle depiction of family tension, the prodding between mother and daughter, the apprehension of what the one does or mainly does not know of the other.-Globe and Mail, on Dancing Lessons
At every level of her stories' constructions, Senior works deftly . . . dealing with open palms in the deep wells of remembrance, ancestry, and a crosshatch of colonizing scars, th
