A High Wind in Jamaica
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This novel offers a provocative and unsettling exploration of childhood that challenges conventional notions of innocence, making it a must-read for fans of psychological and literary fiction.
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Book Summary
A High Wind in Jamaica follows the Bas-Thornton children, especially Emily, as they journey from a decaying Jamaican plantation to England, only to be captured by bumbling pirates. The novel subverts childhood innocence, portraying children as amoral and detached, while exploring themes of violence, trauma, and colonial decline.
The story begins on the Jamaican plantation Ferndale, where the Bas-Thornton children—Emily, John, and younger siblings—live a wild, unsupervised life amid post-Emancipation decay. After a hurricane destroys their home, they are sent to England aboard the Clorinda, captained by the idealistic Captain Marpole. The ship is captured by pirates led by the incompetent Jonsen, and the children are taken aboard the pirate vessel. During their captivity, the children display unsettling detachment: Emily dances during a storm, and John is accidentally killed by the pirates in a panic. The pirates, unable to manage the children, eventually abandon them on a Grand Cayman island, but the children are rescued and returned to England. In London, Emily and the other children are interviewed about the ordeal, but their fragmented, evasive testimony fails to provide clear evidence of the murders. At trial, Emily’s testimony condemns the pirates, who are hanged. The novel ends with Emily beginning a new life at a Blackheath school, seamlessly blending in with other innocent girls, suggesting her profound emotional repression and the ambiguous nature of childhood morality.
Reading guide
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Character guides, themes, chapter companions — plus Character Web, narrative arc, and theme heatmap teasers that unlock fully beside the text in BetterReads.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book.
Emily Thornton
Emily drifts between Jamaica and a pirate schooner with a child's eerie adaptability, drawing pictures in the captain's cabin and hoarding her one great possession, an earthquake. Miss Dawson's gentle interrogations about bloodshed meet only her stubborn, gentle silence, while Edward's invented heroics are believed by everyone. Her private sense that time has slipped by, that she is nearly eleven and has lived nothing, makes her the story's quiet center of gravity.
Captain Jonsen
Jonsen runs the schooner with Nordic tidiness and a schemer's patience, staking everything on returning the children safely to discredit his accusers. Yet the cabin wall still bears Emily's puerile drawings, and the pencil among his bedding triggers a flood of memories he cannot afford. His astute plan works perfectly, and no premonition warns him of the whispering already underway aboard the steamer.
Rachel Thornton
Rachel moves through the schooner as the responsible elder sister, the one whose judgment the younger children quietly lean on. Because she knows the pirates are deadly wicked, she never contradicts Edward's tales of bloodshed, reasoning they probably happened when she wasn't looking. Her unexamined trust becomes the hinge on which the children's shared version of events turns.
Edward Thornton
Edward treats the pirate ship as a playground, rehearsing galley-stormings with Harry and swathing himself in the flying-jib for hide-and-seek. When adults come asking for tales of bloodshed, he sees at once what they want and supplies it, backed by Harry and unchallenged by Rachel. His eager, self-convinced storytelling becomes the narrative the grown-ups prefer to Emily's silence.
Mrs. Thornton
Mrs. Thornton presides over the family's tropical life with an eye on appearances, wary of the wild Fernandez children running barefoot like negroes and of a governess whose blood is possibly not pure. She is nonetheless persuaded that the Exeter climate is healthy and that intercourse with other children does her own good, whatever the risk of bad ways. Her cautious, class-bound mothering sets the children on the road that leads to the schooner.
Margaret Fernandez
Margaret comes from the ramshackle estate the Thorntons visit, a household of barefoot children, hairbrush beatings, and questionable bloodlines. She is among the young passengers caught up in the Clorinda affair, and Jonsen later counts it a near thing with that little bitch Margaret, lucky the second boat picked her up. Her presence sharpens the stakes of his scheme to return the children and bury the episode.
Childhood Innocence and Morality
The book explores the ambiguous nature of childhood innocence, showing children like Emily as amoral, detached, and capable of violence without guilt, challenging the Victorian ideal of the pure child.
Colonial Decay and Imperial Decline
The Jamaican setting is marked by ruins of plantations, impoverished Creole families, and a sense of post-Emancipation stagnation, reflecting the crumbling of British colonial power and the moral decay of empire.
Violence and Cruelty
Violence pervades the narrative, from natural disasters and animal deaths to pirate brutality and the casual murder of children, presented with a detached, almost clinical tone that underscores its absurdity.
Alienation and Detachment
The children, especially Emily, exhibit a profound emotional detachment from events, treating trauma (earthquakes, piracy, death) as ordinary or even entertaining, highlighting a disconnect between adult and child perception.
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