Saint-Pierre, on the island of Martinique in 1902, seems like paradise. However, more than one form of danger is lurking. To survive, a young man or woman will need both LUCK AND LOVE IN 1902.

Keen newspaperman Ethan Woodward is snubbed by the girl he wishes to marry, as she has aspirations beyond Hopewell, New York State. It seems like these suffragette teachings are changing young ladies’ minds nowadays. Ethan edits his father’s comfortable local weekly paper, but to get anywhere further, he will have to travel. Maybe his Jenny was right, and he should see the wider world.

Amos Scott, an able seaman, meets Ethan who is in a despairing moment in New York. He persuades the young man to buy a ticket aboard his father’s ship, the Roraima, which is headed into the Caribbean. That’s where Ethan meets a lovely fellow passenger, Alice Van Dorn, heading off to the island paradise of Martinique to be married to Jean-Paul Moreau from a plantation family. Ethan’s luck has changed, though he doesn’t know it at the time.

I love the descriptions of turn-of-the-century life on the sultry island in the Lesser Antilles of the French West Indies. French and English are spoken equally, and French politics dominate the conversation. Sugar and rum are the main products with a thoroughly mixed population. Only a few people regard the sulfurous smell and wisps of escaping steam from Mount Pelee as any way worrying. After all, the volcano which dominates the island has been dormant for a hundred years.

This sweeping novella, the author Jody Gorran’s first fiction book, is painstakingly researched and full of tensions. He also writes in the style of the times, so that we frequently get a brief interpretation of a scene or gesture. Modern thrillers tend to leave the reader to do that work. Jody Gorran assures us in a note at the end that many of the named characters were based on factual people, but tells us those who weren’t, leaving any sinister or self-serving aspirations to the fictitious folk. LUCK AND LOVE IN 1902 perfectly fits the category of historical romantic suspense and illuminates a corner of history not often seen in general fiction. I will be keen to read more books by the author.