Island Queen: A Novel

Written by Vanessa Riley

Narrated by Adjoa Andoh

Length

21h 16m

Rating

4.6 (566 ratings)

“Richly detailed, vividly depicted, and sweeping in scope, Island Queen is historical fiction at its absolute finest. A stunning must-read!”—Chanel Cleeton, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Beautiful Girl in CubaA remarkable, sweeping historical novel based on the incredibletrue life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free woman of color who rose fromslavery to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in thecolonial West Indies. Borninto slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, Doll bought herfreedom—and that of her sister and her mother—from her Irish planter father andbuilt a legacy of wealth and power as an entrepreneur, merchant, hotelier, andplanter that extended from the marketplaces and sugar plantations of Dominicaand Barbados to a glittering luxury hotel in Demerara on the South Americancontinent.VanessaRiley’s novel brings Doll to vivid life as she rises above the harsh realitiesof slavery and colonialism by working the system and leveraging the competingattentions of the men in her life: a restless shipping merchant, Joseph Thomas;a wealthy planter hiding a secret, John Coseveldt Cells; and a roguish navalcaptain who will later become King William IV of England.Fromthe bustling port cities of the West Indies to the forbidding drawing rooms ofLondon’s elite, Island Queen is a sweeping epic of an adventurer and asurvivor who answered to no one but herself as she rose to power and autonomyagainst all odds, defying rigid eighteenth-century morality and the oppressionof women as well as people of color. It is an unforgettable portrait of a truelarger-than-life woman who made her mark on history.Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.