Why a Booktrail?
1954: Mission House was not built for three people. Especially when one of them won’t stop humming.
Things Bright and Beautiful
What you need to know before your trail
When Beatriz Hanlon agreed to accompany her missionary husband Max to a remote South Pacific island, she knew there would be challenges. But it isn’t just the heat and the damp and the dirt. There are more insects than she could ever have imagined, and the islanders are strangely hostile. And then there are the awful noises coming from the church at night.
Yet as the months go by, Bea slowly grows accustomed to life on the island. That is until an unexpected and interminably humming guest arrives, and the couple’s claustrophobic existence is stretched to breaking point.
Events draw to a terrible climax, and Bea watches helplessly as her husband’s guilt drives him into madness. It’s not long before Bea finds herself fighting for her freedom, and her life
Locations
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Advent Island
A real island but not the one in the book you would hope!.
Pastor Max and his wife Bea, come to the island. This island is their live, their prison and their everything. It takes over them and infiltrates their minds as well as their brains.
The heat is tropical and humid and it’s unforgiving – there’s rats, thousands of bugs of every description possible ( you may find yourself scratching), trees that enclose you in their grasp and on the island, there is no easy escape.
No escape either from the humming……
This is the kind of place where sorcerers live, where magic is practised in many forms. Those who live in the central part of the island, daren’t venture to the east for feature of vampires and goodness knows what else. This is the kind of place which could make you go mad….
This is an island where religion is mixed with the devil, voodoo and magic of various descriptions, strange belief systems, the unknown and a sect like, prisoner lifestyle.
This might be a mission but there will be more than one person praying for release from it all.
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
It took me a while after I’d read this novel to realise what I thought about it. It fascinated and annoyed me at different times during my time on Advent Island, a fictional place thank goodness, where the book is set.
It was totally immersive and claustrophobic throughout though.Pastor Max and his wife Bea come here but it gets too much too soon for the Pastor and he descends into a hell of his own. Those trees get darker and more dense, the island even more remote and cut off from reality. Delirium is his only companion before too long.
This growing madness and spiral into hell on earth was sometimes difficult to read and when mention of the humming started, I felt myself getting as annoyed and frustrated as the characters. I swear I could feel those bugs creeping over me as I read.
I’ll stop there as you’ll want to go on that journey to Advent Island yourself as it will have various effects on you so take the bug spray and read this underneath a giant net.
Be aware though if anyone hums near you as you read…
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Things Bright and Beautiful
Destination : South Pacific Author/Guide: Anbara Salam Departure Time: 1954
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