J. Campbell

Promises on a Ring of Stone J. Campbell

David Llewellyn, a white American writer, becomes infatuated with a young black woman while vacationing on a small Caribbean island. But love is not all he finds in paradise. Llewellyn becomes absorbed in the dark legend of a Victorian heiress reputed to have ritually killed young children in her search for eternal youth. He becomes enmeshed in a collision of black and white, rich and poor-all struggling for control of an old plantation that is the key to their aspirations. Llewellyn's ambitions and desires soon become blinders. Even as strange events and ghostly warnings abound, he is unable to see a plot unfurling to recreate an ancient blood ceremony in which his own life will be the crucial sacrifice. Promises on a Ring of Stone lifts the mask of polite smiles and friendly faces on a Caribbean island paradise, exposing deep-seated rifts in the society of an emerging nation in the 1970s. It is also a story of the struggle and mistrust between different racial and socioeconomic groups, set against a backdrop of resurrected pagan rites and enduring voodoo beliefs.