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HaBO: All Around the World

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This request comes from a gentleman whose wife is looking for the first romance she read. This one is a doozy:

“This would have been in the 1983-1987 timeframe. I think it had a purple
cover (but I don’t think Johanna Lindsey wrote it). I remember it being
quite racy for a girl my age…

It may or may not have started off with a rich heiress trying to escape a
bad betrothal in the Caribbean to a much older man to pay off her father’s
debts. There was a pirate (with very green eyes) between the Carribbean and
France who took her virtue. Later, she was all the rage in Paris, and
Napolean’s attentions drove Josephine mad with jealousy. She left France
on a ship; other passengers included a Puritan couple from New England who
did not approve of her.

The captain of the ship was the pirate. Or maybe the pirate captured her
ship? In either case, she wound up somewhere in Africa, traded as a white
slave into a harem. She was picked to be some sultan’s squeeze (he was
described as a Janissary), but our plucky heroine was with the pirate’s
child at this point. The fabulous Arab had his way (but only anally). She
gave birth, and was told the baby died during childbirth, but it was really
taken away & given to the Puritan couple. They were being held hostage by
the Janissary.

Then, she wound up back in New Orleans, was called an octoroon and sold as a
slave. The green-eyed pirate rescued her and she was reunited with her son
(the missing baby). Then wound up in the Oregon territories. Or maybe not.
It’s all verrry fuzzy after all this time. “

Of course I Googled “octoroon” and am so pleased to make the acquaintance of one more piece of racist nomenclature. Good Lord.  Anyone remember this book?

 

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  1. MissMariah says:

    *Insert proper quoting subset above*

  2. Anon76 says:

    Loved the tangents on this topic. Learned a lot.

    On family history, my mom, well…le sigh.

    My brother (half brother) became obsessed a few years ago about tracing our family tree. Well, his dad’s and our mom’s. All I could really tell him was that I knew we had some Native American ancestor on our mother’s side because I’d met another descendant when I was a child. My eight-year-old self was “helping” to dig a hole for my grandma’s first septic system ever. (Yes, before that she had an outhouse.) This man called me “little sister”, told me I was his relation, and imparted some family stuff and nature things that are totally lost to me now.

    Many years later, my brother binged me to say, “I think we may have had a black ancestor, too. That might be why mom won’t talk about our family.” Might be? Um, hello, to her both of those heritages were unbearable. Which really makes no sense because she lived for many years with, and nearly married a full blooded Cherokee, and her best friend on the planet was a black man.

    Such an enigma.

    And as to family secrets…Mom finally told me when I was twenty-one that I had six brothers and sisters. They lived just down the road from my grandma. When one girl called me her little sister when I was about six, my mother AND grandmother said not to pay any attention…that was just the crazy girl down the “holler”.

    Yes folks, this was West Virginia in the late 60’s.

    And as a footnote, my Grandpa died in a fire his shed. It was his bootleg shed. First story, his still blew. Second story, rival bootleggers took him out. Third story, and probably closer to the truth, he was prone to placing his boots under another married woman’s bed.

    Gads, I have a ton more of these, but isn’t it all fascinating when you dig into history? Even your own.

  3. Helen W says:

    @AgTigress

    There is also a Caribbean version (or maybe more than one).

    Madness also recorded a great version of it (

    ). And I swear it started to play in my head the second before I scrolled down and saw your reply to the comment about the Irish folk song! Great minds think alike, it seems.

  4. cate says:

    @ Helen W…..Thanks for that, you just brought back my semi- mispent youth with the proverbial bang !

  5. AgTigress says:

    Helen W:  thank you for that link! I enjoyed the ‘Madness’ version, which I didn’t know.  It’s a very engaging song.
    But take a listen to this as well, the Peter Tosh version (with a sort of mixed Wailers/Skatalites backing.  Bob is in there somewhere…)



    I love the strong, basic ska beat.
    🙂

  6. Trish Olsen says:

    francis Parkinson Keyes, whose most famous work is Dinner at Antoine’s had other novels in which New Orleans social and racial attitudes such as those discussed above were shown to exist in the 20th century. They were also very good books in picturing a society very alien to most of us, but very interesting about Carnival (Mardi Gras) and high New Orleans society.

  7. New Orleans speaks to the soul more than any other city I have been in.  But I haven’t been in that many.  You walk through St. Louis cemetary and fully expect to see a familiar name on a stone.

  8. rigmarole says:

    I was going to respond to this when it was posted, but totally forgot until the latest batch of HaBO posts showed up. Strangely, my first introduction to the term “octoroon” was from a historical romance, too, and Oregon actually was involved, but other than that, I doubt it’s the same book. Mine was part of the sprawling Wagons West series by Dana Fuller Ross. The character showed up several books in, but it probably would have been published in the right timeframe, or a little earlier. There were several storylines in every book, so it could have been confusing to younger readers. Still, probably it’s coincidental.

    I really wish I could find good descriptions of the books online. I hate to think this is going to end up with me hunting down more than twenty used books just to satisfy my curiosity.

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