Review of "Cape of Arrows" by Patricia Gill

Budding writers are often advised to “write about what you know.” Patricia Gill’s new novel Cape of Arrows demonstrates that this is eminently sound advice for an author with a comprehensive knowledge in a variety of interesting areas. Ms. Gill is a writer, sociologist, educator, and long-time resident of St. Croix, who earned a Ph. D. in the Philosophy of Education form the University of Connecticut and a Masters Degree in the Sociology of Education from Harvard University. Her novel skillfully combines her insights into matters as diverse as the role of women in academia, the history of St. Croix, and Taino archaeology.

The novel is about the adventures of Ruth Dyer, a teaching assistant accompanying a renowned archaeologist on an expedition to St Croix, U. S. Virgin Islands. The dig is at the Cape of Arrows, now called Salt River, site of an ancient Taino settlement and of an encounter between Christopher Columbus and its inhabitants. But not all of the skeletons found by the expedition are of ancient vintage, and not all of the people of St. Croix welcome the expedition with open arms.

The novel has many of the elements of a mystery, but ultimately transcends the genre. Ms. Gill deals with serious issues of race and genre in a variety of ways: as they effect our perceptions of ancient peoples, as they influence the relationship of residents of the U. S. territories with the mainland, and as they affect the life of a woman in academia. Ms. Gill pulls off the amazing feat of making these issues real and immediate to the reader; this cannot be done unless the writer is genuinely passionate about the issues herself.

Ms. Gill is uniquely suited to addressing these concerns. She is a pioneer among women in academia, having taught sociology at Vassar College, Latin American and Caribbean History and Spanish at the University of Connecticut and the University of the Virgin Islands, and Educational Problems of Developing Areas at Fairfield University Graduate School of Education. She has written scholar works about Taino archaeology. Her love of St. Croix is evident in her writing, and still more evident to those who have had the chance to speak with her. Ms. Gill is also skilled in fictional narrative. She came to the Virgin Islands from Hollywood, where she had been working as a historical researcher and script writer for Wayne-Fellows, Inc. Her literary credits include a play, "Murder in the Embassy", which won an award in the Canadian Drama Festival, "Sabotaje en la Selva", the first full-length feature film produced in color in Latin America, and "The Liberators", a historical account of the Wars of Independence in Latin America, written for John Wayne. A historical novel, Buddhoe, based on the events leading up to emancipation of the “unfree” in the Danish West Indies in 1848, was originally published in 1977 and is now in its third edition.

Cape of Arrows is ultimately a Bildungsroman about Ruth Dyer, who progresses from a comfortable place in academia and a comfortable relationship with her fiancée to a world which is less secure, but which offers a wider variety of choices. The novel is spiced with interesting characters, and those familiar with St. Croix will enjoy speculating about the real-life island residents, living and dead, who inspired them. The novel presents a much more accurate and engaging picture of life on St. Croix than anything else I have ever read, and should supplant such old saws as Herman Wouk’s Don’t Stop the Carnival as required reading for those new to the Territory. It is a work both serious and entertaining, and I recommend it highly.