A High Wind in Jamaica

Richard Hughes has always been my favorite under-read author. I tell people he writes as though he were the love child of A. A. Milne and Joseph Conrad.

A High Wind begins in an idyllic Caribbean setting, with the five Thornton and two Fernandez children living in what seems to be pre-lapsarian innocence; but Hughes soon plunks them square into the world of “Typhoon” and Lord Jim.

There are hellacious hurricanes and swashbuckling pirates involved, but it’s the pirates that are finally defenseless in the face of the children they unluckily take on board from an England-bound passenger ship.… show more.

Not technically a fairy tale, this surrealist classic nevertheless reads as if a haze of magic might as well be wafting the prose directly into the reader’s mind. The story about a passel of spirited children orphaned by a hurricane and kidnapped by bawdy Caribbean pirates remains shocking and yet deliciously lyrical in its cheeky exploration of human nature and childhood resilience. I read it and am reminded of the often frightening fluidity of human behavior under unexpected influences. 

I read this book on someone else’s recommendation – I remembered seeing the movie some years back and enjoying it – but what I expected to be a children’s adventure book, suitable for all ages, was anything but that. A hurricane destroys a plantation in Jamaica and the owners of the plantation decide to send their five children on a merchant ship back to England where, the parents assume, the children will be safe from harm. But the ship is captured by pirates, and there the adventure begins. Gradually the book becomes darker and bloodier, and this growing darkness is… show more.

Five British children are sent to England by ship after a hurricane destroys their Jamaican home. On an ocean crossing without their parents, the ship is taken by pirates, who eventually pass the children to a steamship, bound for England. Emily, a ten-year-old, comes of age on the journey. Not physically or sexually, but she becomes conscious and self-aware. Much of the story is seen through her eyes, and the events she chooses to forget or adapt. Great psychological fiction, and a dark, coming-of-age set at sea.