Archive - September 26, 2018

  Jamie’s Muse Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) Nighthawk Press May 2018 236 pages $15.00 (paperback)  $9.99 (Kindle)   Reviewed by Terez Rose (Gabon 1985-87) • The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead young mothers, returning to see how their children fare. There is no other inducement great enough to bring the dead back. — J.M. Barrie, The Little White Bird In Jamie’s Muse, author Bonnie Lee Black (Somewhere Child, How to Cook a Crocodile, How to Make an African Quilt) has created a luminous reimagining of her great-grandmother’s life, her emigration from Scotland to South Africa and its sorrowful ending. Black’s grandfather had been born in South Africa, spent time in an Edinburgh orphanage and stowed away on a New York-bound steamer as a teen, yet on his 1954 death certificate, under “mother” was written “unknown.” The story behind the story haunted Black, igniting in her . . .