In Brief: Tangerine Skies: A Bahamian Family Saga

By Rosemary Minns. Self-published, 2024. 489 pages. $19.50/paperback; $12.50/eBook.

Set in the nineteenth century, this historical novel opens with a vivid and detailed description of devout Quaker John Minns’s longtime love interest humiliating him by scorning his marriage proposal. The young woman spurns John because she considers him too serious and boring. Although she grew up Quaker, as John did, she rejects plain dress and the sheltered, meeting-centered life John has led. Her rejection drives him to leave London, where he had worked earnestly in his uncle and aunt’s bakery. Stinging from the young woman’s rejection, he departs on a ship to the West Indies which is also carrying enslaved people. John left school to apprentice as a baker, but he remembers an abolitionist speaker he heard as a student, as well as a book written by a formerly enslaved man. Rosette, an enslaved African woman, rescues John from a shipwreck off the coast of Nassau, Bahamas.

At Rosette’s request, in return for saving his life, John purchases Rosette, intending to manumit her. The author portrays Rosette as a smart and capable businesswoman who earns money cooking and selling spicy fritters. John and Rosette develop a romantic relationship, which forms the crux of the plot.

The book invites readers into a morally complicated situation based on actual events that occurred among the author’s forbearers. It features characters readers care about as well as glimpses into period dancing and culinary culture. Readers seeking an engaging read that explores how an individual Quaker can work for abolition will appreciate this book.