As the title declares, this novel retells the story of The Tempest. Set in 1961 on Trinidad and the small island of Chacachacare off its coast, Prospero's Daughter portrays the intersection of a handful of lives as England's empire withdraws. Assistant commissioner, John Mumsford, has come to Trinidad because as a white man and an Englishman he can live the life of a lord that his middle-class birth could not provide at home. Change is in the air, though, with calls for independence, and Mumsford is not certain he can trust his Trinidadian commissioner, whose white skin does not preclude the African blood most people assume runs in the veins of Trinidad's French Creoles.
Mumsford is sent to Chacachacare to investigate an alleged rape of a white girl by her black servant, the Englishman's worst nightmare. But he has also received a note from Ariana, the other servant in the household, who says that there was no rape and that the two are in love. The household is run by Peter Gardner, a disgraced and reclusive scientist, who came out from England with his young daughter, Virginia, several years earlier. He took over the house from Carlos, then a young, newly orphaned boy, claiming that he had bought it from the dying servant who had been caring for Carlos and the servant girl, Ariana. The only other inhabitants of the island are a small leper colony and a doctor who serves them.
In secret the educated Carlos calls Gardner by the magician's name because, like Prospero, Gardner has used his botanical knowledge to create a world of his own, with grass that does not need watering and polka-dotted flowers. To make space for this fragment of England made even better by his successful experiments, he has destroyed the native habitat, cutting down the fruit trees planted by Carlos's father and taming the terrifying jungle to remain at a safe distance.
I was recently in St. Croix where the native trees were cut down to create sugar plantations, plantations that failed when the bottom dropped out of the sugar market. I'd never thought of The Tempest in terms of ecology, but of course it is the story of an outsize ego believing that his power is absolute; he can do whatever he wants on his island. But we are not islands, and the outside world intrudes. As we have learned, the effects of ecological disasters are not limited to the area where they occur.
This story is enthralling, keeping me up nights to finish it. Nunez's descriptions are gorgeous, evoking the tangled beauty of the island, the cold precision of Gardner's house, the delicate carvings of birds and flowers made by Carlos's father. The relationship between Carlos and Virginia is delicately traced, believable and sweet. Brave Ariana is the one my heart aches for, but it is Mumsford who most interests me. He may start the story as a rigidly prejudiced and fearful Englishman, but he reveals unexpected strengths. Like its precursor, this is a story about power, the power of knowledge, the power of love, the power of courage, the power of integrity. It brilliantly brings out the relationship of power to class and race buried in Shakespeare's play.