Vanessa Riley, author of Island Queen, is coming to Lexington
*Vanessa Riley will be hosted by Pig City Books and Davidson Local on Sunday, September 26 at 1:00pm at Bull City Ciderworks. The event is free! Join us!
“Richly detailed, vividly depicted, and sweeping in scope, Island Queen is historical fiction at its absolute finest. A stunning must-read!”
— Chanel Cleeton, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba
Inspired by a sketch, a cartoon that originally printed in Rambler Magazine 1788, of Prince William Henry (future King William IV) and an unidentified Black woman, author Vanessa Riley began her journey to uncover the story behind this unique and rare image. The woman in the image was drawn beautifully, atypical for cartoons of Black women during this time. Riley wondered why a woman of color would be drawn in such an intimate, yet respectful way with the future King. Vanessa needed to know this woman’s story. And it took years for her to uncover snippets of information about this self-made, wealthy, formerly enslaved Black woman from the colony of Demerara. Why had history forgotten her name?
From legal transactions, newspaper articles, published anecdotal accounts, and legal records, Vanessa Riley recreated the life of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas in the remarkable novel ISLAND QUEEN (Morrow, on sale 7.6.21, $27.99, 9780063002845). Born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, “Doll” bought her freedom—and that of her sister and her mother—from her Irish planter father and built a legacy of wealth and power as an entrepreneur, merchant, hotelier, and planter that extended from the marketplaces and sugar plantations of Dominica and Barbados to a glittering luxury hotel in Demerara on the South American continent.
Vanessa Riley’s novel brings Doll to vivid life as she rises above the harsh realities of slavery and colonialism by working the system and leveraging the competing attentions of the men in her life: a restless shipping merchant, Joseph Thomas; a wealthy planter hiding a secret, John Coseveldt Cells; and a roguish naval captain who will later become King William IV of England.
Mrs. Thomas was articulate, astute, and business-minded. She was a woman of passion who struggled with functional illiteracy, heart-wrenching losses, and betrayals. She was an original code-switcher who spoke plainly with servants and family (including her favorite swear word, “tarn”), and saved her polished parlor chats for admirals, businessmen and the gentry who sought her company. She was a complex woman dealing with the issues of her time: racism, enslavement, marriage politics, taxation, and women’s rights.
From the bustling port cities of the West Indies to the forbidding drawing rooms of London’s elite, ISLAND QUEEN is a sweeping epic of an adventurer and a survivor who answered to no one but herself as she rose to power and autonomy against all odds, defying rigid eighteenth-century morality and the oppression of women as well as people of color. In this sumptuous novel, Riley paints an unforgettable portrait of a true larger-than-life woman who made her mark on history.
# # #
About the Author: In addition to being a novelist, Vanessa Riley holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering and a master’s in industrial engineering and engineering management from Stanford University. She also earned BS and MS in mechanical engineering from Penn State University. She currently juggles mothering a teen, cooking for her military-man husband, and speaking at women's and STEM events. She loves baking her Trinidadian grandma's cake recipes and collecting Irish crochet lace. You can catch her writing from the comfort of her porch in Georgia, with a cup of Earl Grey tea. Riley lives in Atlanta.
