The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman

The lush tropical paradise of St. Thomas in the Caribbean inspired Columbus to call the island Heaven-in-Earth. The sunshine can cut like a knife. The island is drenched in color-- the flowers and birds, sky and sea in shades of orange and red and blue. Mortar is mixed with local molasses.

Two Women Chatting by the Sea, St. Thomas, (1856) by Camille Pissaro

The Pomie family fled the Inquisition and landed in Danish held St. Thomas. Here they could practice their faith in a small enclave of Jews. Just after the turn of the 19th c dreamy seventeen-year-old Rachel Pomie longs for another life, imagining Paris where her father had lived. This is not a time when people made choices; their work and marriages were determined for them. Rachel is married to an older man in order to secure her family's financial security. He is good to her, but is still in love with his deceased wife. Rachel she has been told that she will have a second marriage, a true love.

After her husband's death his nephew arrives to manage the family finances and estates. Frederic Pizzaro is seven years younger than Rachel, a pious and handsome Sephardic Jew who grew up Europe. They fall in love immediately.

There are complications. Rachel is Frederic's aunt by marriage and they cannot marry. They try to stay apart but finally succumb to their passion and then live together. They are shunned until they receive permission to marry.

Their child Jacobo Camille Pissaro  is meant to inherit the family business, but is dreamy and detached. He is sent away to be educated in Paris and is brought home to work at the family business. He longs to escape and dedicate his life to art. He becomes the confident of those with secret knowledge, learning that when someone tells their story you are entwined together. A gifted and self taught artist, Camille becomes the "father of impressionism".

The Pomie-Pizzaro family are surrounded by slaves and the ancestors of slaves. Their pasts and fates are interwoven, alliances are covered up, lies become truth.

Alice Hoffman's novel Marriage of Opposites is atmospheric and romantic. She has taken a few facts and transformed them into a story full of vivid characters with mysterious and complicated pasts. The Jewish community of St. Thomas struggles with these maverick personalities who won't concede to the rules and marry and outside of their faith and race. Hoffman's story does become entwined with the reader.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. It was my first Alice Hoffman novel. It won't be my last.

The Marriage of Opposites
Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: August 4, 2015
ISBN: 978145693591
$27.99 hard cover