Researching The
White Witch
By Larry D. Thompson
My son, Kel,
who lives in South Florida, returned
from a business trip to Montego Bay, Jamaica, talking
about the legend of the WHITE WITCH. His story interested me enough that a few
months later we both went to Jamaica to learn
more about Annie Palmer, the White Witch, and, also, about the Maroons.
Kel had not stumbled across the Maroon story while he was there, but I did a
little research about the area and learned about them. That trip let me to
combine the Maroons with the White Witch to create what is certainly my best
thriller to date (bear in mind that I’ll probably say the
same thing about my
next thriller; such is the nature of a novelist.).
We stayed at
the Ritz, which was built on what was once part of the Rose Hall Plantation. We
golfed
at the hotel course, aptly named “The White Witch.” We toured the Rose
Hall Great House where Annie Palmer lived two hundred years before and where
she tortured and murdered three husbands and many more slave lovers. We learned
that even today the staff in the mansion insists on leaving before dark every
evening; for they fear that the White Witch may be out roaming the grounds of
her old plantation. However, let me hasten to add that Annie Palmer is only a
supporting character in this drama. After all, she died two hundred years ago.
Still her legend is strong enough that in my story when a series of murders
occur in the Montego Bay area, some
with snake knives said to have belonged to the White Witch, it’s only a small
leap for the locals to believe, true or not, that the White Witch must be
responsible.
The real
story and the conflict that created it is up in the mountains above Montego Bay, a small
village called Accompong, the ancestral home of the Maroons (short for Cimarron, or “wild
and untamed.). The original Maroons started escaping from their Spanish captors
in the early fifteen hundreds, following game trails up into the mountains
where they formed villages and lived off the land. When the Spaniards tried to
re-capture them, they fought back and soon were going down from the mountains
in the dead of night to attack the Spaniards as they slept. They fought for
about a hundred years before the British drove the Spaniards to Cuba. The British
could not understand how a band of ex-slaves could so consistently beat back
the Spaniards until they tried to capture the Maroons. After another hundred or
so years, they asked for a cease fire and signed a treaty with Cudjoe, the
leader of the Maroons, giving them dominion over the rainforest up in the
mountains, provided they would allow the British to raise sugar cane and
bananas along the coast. That treaty exists to this day. Only, an American
corporation was threatening to mine bauxite in the Maroons’ rainforest
when Kel and I were there. To get to the bottom of the conflict, we drove up a
pothole filled road to Accompong and asked for an audience with the Colonel of
the Maroons. Surprisingly, he talked to us. Only later did we learn that they
did not like strangers in their village, particularly white men. Still, what we
didn’t know didn’t hurt us. But it did give me the idea for the story which is
really about the Maroons willingness to fight once again for their rain forest.
Of course, the White Witch does make cameo appearances throughout the tale, but
usually only in the imagination of some other character.
It was
fascinating research that led to a very good thriller. And if you want to see
the Maroon/British treaty that Cudjoe signed (with his X because he could
neither read nor write), just go on line. The treaty is still there and is
validity is still being debated by scholars.
Larry
is married to his wife, Vicki. He has three children scattered from Colorado to Austin to Boca Raton, and four grandchildren. He has been
trying to retire from the law practice to devote full time to writing.
Hopefully, that will occur by the end of 2018. He still lives in Houston, but spends his summers in Vail CO, high on a mountain where he is
inspired by the beauty of the Rocky Mountains.
His
latest book is the captivating thriller, WHITE
WITCH.
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