Island Queen

A Novel

Vanessa Riley

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780063002852
• eBook ISBN:
  9780063002869
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Fiction
• Index: Literature

"Vanessa Riley's version of the real-life Dorothy Kirwan Thomas legend will make readers fall in love with this overlooked 'hidden' queen." —Kaia Alderson, author of Sisters in Arms
A remarkable, sweeping historical novel based on the incredible true-life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free Black woman who rose from slavery to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies. 
Born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, Doll bought her freedom—and that of her sister and her mother—from her Irish planter father and built a legacy of wealth and power as an entrepreneur, merchant, hotelier, and planter that extended from the marketplaces and sugar plantations of Dominica and Barbados to a glittering luxury hotel in Demerara on the South American continent.
Vanessa Riley's novel brings Doll to vivid life as she rises above the harsh realities of slavery and colonialism by working the system and leveraging the competing attentions of the men in her life: a restless shipping merchant, Joseph Thomas; a wealthy planter hiding a secret, John Coseveldt Cells; and a roguish naval captain who will later become King William IV of England.
From the bustling port cities of the West Indies to the forbidding drawing rooms of London's elite,  Island Queen is a sweeping epic of an adventurer and a survivor who answered to no one but herself as she rose to power and autonomy against all odds, defying rigid eighteenth-century morality and the oppression of women as well as people of color. It is an unforgettable portrait of a true larger-than-life woman who made her mark on history.

Part One

The Lessons

My father never said I should be nothin’.

Montserrat 1761: A Rebellion

We were going to die tonight.

I knew it.

Huddled in my mother’s hut, I circled the knot in the oak floorboard with my toe. The planks were long and worn. By my cracked window, I shivered in a blanket woven of cast-off threads, waiting for the rebellion to end.

We’d seen war off in the sea. Big British ships with silver cannons heading toward Martinique. My pa claimed they want to control the island and to return their enemies to France.

Those ships could come to Montserrat next. The French controlled here, too, and most folks served their Catholic god. The British hated that the most.

I wished they’d take over if it meant we’d finally have peace. In huts like this with shutters made of cottonwood and roofs of coco palms and thatch, we feared nothing but the overseers’ whips. Nothing British could be worse.

“Dorothy, stay away from the window. All will be well.”

My ma’s voice found me in the dark; her tone, warm and brave and confident, wrapped me like a hug.

Guns belched and drove that feeling from my arms.

More screams, not the planters’ smooth tongues, but our men’s. The captives’ cries.

Part of me wanted to light the firepit to see into the night. My ma, Mamaí, thought smoke puffing out of the roof hole would attract the fight.

I didn’t think killers needed an invitation.

Hot air rising might signal a prickly iguana, one of those spiny big-eyed lizards, not men.

More drum-drum-drumming.

I capped my mouth before the fear in my gut dribbled out in sobs. I told Mamaí that I would be brave, but I’d be slaughtered in my fifth year.

Not fair, never fair.

This place wasn’t to be for war. An Emerald Isle Pa called Montserrat. It was meant for Irish jigs and songs between chores.

“Dorothy? You stayin’ away from that window?”

I bit my lip and peeked through the shutters I’d opened. I shouldn’t have; I had to squint at the sooty sky. Stars might be out. Seeing the distant shimmers would let me know all was well.

“Dorothy? I called to you.”

That wasn’t Mamaí’s angry voice.

I had a little more time to collect myself, and I rubbed my stinging eyes. That feeling of being cheated ripped at my lungs. Five small years wasn’t enough living. None of the dreams in my skull had been born. Please. I couldn’t die with dreams trapped in my head.

Water leaked down my fat mammee apple cheeks. Not fair to die tonight. Not fair at all.

“Dorothy?”

I couldn’t answer now. The tears would tell her I was weak. She’d be sad. I vowed to never rob her of any more joy. Mamaí didn’t laugh enough. Her smile was flat, almost a frown.

I swore I’d be brave when Pa was gone.

Don’t know how to do that anymore. How to be strong with the smell of death surrounding the hut.

“Dorothy, come here, girl. Now!”

My ma stood at my door with baby Kitty asleep on her hip. “Knew you were being too quiet, my chatty girl.” She pointed to the open red shutters. “Couldn’t help yourself. That sky is talkin’ to you. Readying you to fly away.”

Mamaí’s steady voice calmed the restless bits in my chest, but I couldn’t move from the window. I had to see the rebels coming and the smoke rising from the town.

Bare feet slapped against the creaking floor. My ma came and yanked me up.

Wincing for a strike, I caught love, a strong hug, pulling me close.

I stopped shaking as she hummed in my ear. She offered me the tune that she saved for my sister to get her to nap. I loved it. It made good dreams.

Deciding I could be five and not brave, I cried against my mother’s leg.

Her song had no words, at least none I knew, but Mamaí’s arms were soft. I nestled my cheek again against her hip. The new allotment of osnaburg cloth she used to make clothes was stiff and scratchy, but I cared not. I held her tighter and marveled at the orange and yellow leaves she’d stained for the print.

“You’ll be all right, Dorothy. The planters will put down the rebellion. The Irish and French always do. Poor Cudjoe. The fool will get everyone killed.”

The old man who begs in the square with a hat that covers his eyes, he was responsible for the fields burning? That feeble fellow convinced folks to take up their scythes and shovels to kill the overseers?

No. That couldn’t be.

“Pa should be here, Mamaí. He should be here to protect us. He always has when he’s here.”

She pulled away like I’d uttered something bad. The shadows in her eyes said I mouthed something very wrong.

Turning from me, she smoothed Kitty’s rumpled pink tunic. “Massa Kirwan is away. That pa of yours has his overseers stocked with guns. Guns are more powerful than anything the poor rebels have.”

My lungs stung. I looked up at her beautiful brown face and shook my fists. “Who do you want to win?”

“Numbers win, not right or wrong, numbers, Dorothy.”

I gawked at her blank look, one my mother often wore, like she’d disappeared inside herself.

I didn’t want to be sucked into that nothingness, where nothing mattered.

Couldn’t we have the fear gone?

Couldn’t we be on the side of good?

Couldn’t we have both?

Backing up, I looked out and hunted my stars. “I’m better, Mamaí. Call me Dolly. That’s what Pa says. I’m his little doll.”

“Your name is Dorothy.” The pitch of her hummingbird voice rose. “Dorothy.”

“Dolly.” My voice became harsh like a crow’s call. “I feel special with Dolly. Pa picked it. He’s always right.”

She put Kitty on my blanket and swaddled her. “You have a cockle-stuffed toy I sewed you, nothing of the fancy formed paper Kirwan describes.”

That was true.

Pa never brought me one from his travels, but that didn’t matter. It sounded nice and pretty, being his doll and different from what the women at the cistern whispered. They said my skin was dirty like tar. They put lies in the air that I wasn’t Pa’s.

Being Dolly, his Dolly, proved it. I was pretty and black, black like a black diamond. “Pa says I have doll eyes, too. Light like the sun, like a star. I like Dolly.”

“It’s important what they call you. You were named Dorothy. It means gift. You’re a gift of God.”

“I want Dolly. Dolly. Dolly. Dolly. Pa calls me Dolly. You are always mean to him.” My pout was louder than I wanted, but the guns had grown stronger, too. The fight was near our hut.

“Just turned five, and you talkin’ back like you’re big. You’re not grown, Dorothy.”

Mamaí’s face held the deepest frown, then Kitty started crying.

“Too much nonsense, girl. Come back from the window. You’ll sleep with me on my bedroll.”

She waved at me, but I was stubborn and searched the sky a little longer, looking for the brightest one. I pinched my fingers together as if I could measure distances in the shifting fog.

I gasped as an outline of a beast dragging limbs came toward us.

“Mamaí? Something’s out there.”

She closed up the window and put her hands to my shoulder. She shook me; the sleeves of my berry-red shift loosened and tightened as I tried to wiggle free. “You saw nothin’.”

A yelp blasted.

“Nothin’ made a noise, Mamaí.”

A strangled cry, the hurt clawing through my skin, made me knock open the shutters.

The fog parted. A man carrying a body staggered toward us.

“Help me!”

A woman’s voice yelping in pain—I knew it. “Mamaí, that’s Mrs. Ben. She needs us. They’re calling.”

My mother’s face was stone. She’d gone away again to that faraway place, but I needed her here. I needed her to tell me how to help.

“Please, Mamaí. What do I do?”

“Nothin’. You saw nothin’. It’s not safe outside these walls.”

But I did see Mrs. Ben, a woman in need. “She’s been good to me.”

Five-year-old me could help even if I was scared.

“Waaahhh!” Kitty awakened with a loud screech.

It was eno...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Map
• Contents
• London 1824: Kensington House
• Part One: The Lessons
• Part Two: My Living
• Part Three: The Stand
• Part Four: The Loving
• Part Five: My Choice
• Part Six: The Legacy
• Epilogue
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
• Copyright
• About the Publisher