RECEIVE ME FALLING by Erika Robuck

Author's Creative Brand:
"Receive Me Falling" 
Genre: Historical Fiction / Mystery / Literature
Length: 280 Pages
Elysian Fields Press 

My 9 Reader 'Hot-Button' Considerations:

1.  World's Immersion:
“Nature is still in command here.” Erika Robuck uses a present-day frame for her first novel, to place Readers in a familiar world of modern Annapolis, Maryland, USA...but only as the jump-off point into the deep-end of a wilder journey. We are transported across an ocean of both physical space and historical Time to the island of Nevis, in the Caribbean, circa: early 1830's.

This present day journey arrives at an immense plantation once called Eden, and the ghost of a plantation house, standing mightily against the tropical majesty of its exotic backdrop.  This house, formerly owned by the Dalls who once ran the plantation, is now over-run by emerald vines which have grown in densely through the windows, completely overtaking the dining room walls, among other unknown spaces within.  Architectural cultivation dragged backward into a context of wild, organic imposition. “The night was never silent in Nevis.”  

The plantation house, as setting to our central story, has not been ransacked by the local culture which is collectively superstitious of disrupting ghosts of the past.  We, the Readers, are left with this delicious opening into a pristine, historical mystery of a time-capsule...and timeless issues of a deep, human gravity.

2. Character/Icons:

Key Characters from Present Day Story-Frame:

Meghan Owen (w/ story set-up):  a fiancée interrupted…one moment, Meg celebrates the engagement announcement of her pending marriage to Brian, with her parents Anne and Richard...Life is sweet. The next flash of fate blows her parents off the road in a fatal car accident! Life game-changer, and Meg retreats from her engagement to untangle knots of her own mourning, an enormous law-suit vs. her fraudulent father's covert business cons, and a disturbing matter of family legacy tied-in with a slave plantation in the Caribbean.

Drew Edmead: Older Nevis Island museum curator, whose one hand has been melted from a sugar-boiling incident when he was a slave. Drew becomes a research ally for Meg, and a fatherly influence of support.

Hamilton: a young Caribbean boy who randomly becomes Meg's island friend and ‘guide.’ The boy is sure-footed on the Eden property's wild environments.  Hamilton, a warm soul, humming to himself while tossing sea-shells into the surf, looks out for Meg during her stay.

Key Characters from Period 1800's Central Story:

Catherine Dall:  A young English-woman, and lady of the plantation.  She is ahead of her time, being confident, innovative of mind, empathetic of heart, but somewhat impatient with her status. Despite being a slave-owner by family inheritance, she involves herself with the Caribs in a family way, unpopular with the accepted behaviors of her insular society.  Dark-skinned from her endeavors under the sun (against convention), she has sun-bleached tresses, “like a slave with white hair.”

Cecil Dall (Cathy’s father):  Fully for slavery and one of the big three plantation owners on Nevis. Cecil believes his daughter too compassionate to have sense, and sees the slaves as rightfully owned.  He has a gentleness where his daughter is concerned, yet he inhabits a starker reality than genteel appearances.

Leah:  a Caribbean slave girl who grew-up playing with Catherine when they were children, and they remain close. Leah has a secret relationship of give-and-take with Catherine, as Leah's mistress teaches her to read, and runs freely as friends with her in the Nevis jungles. Despite the girls' relationship of near-equality, Leah's slave existence is a brutal one, a reality that exerts a growing rift between them.

James Silwell: Arrives on Nevis with his father Albert, notices the beauty of his island surroundings, but feels suffocated by the brutal reality he notes there. The pair introduce themselves to the Dalls and other plantation owners, as entrepreneurs who desire to learn the business for starting their own slave plantation.

Albert Silwell:  Father to James, steady and placid, he is the voice of gentle reason, in contrast to his son's notably, emotional disposition.  

Edward Ewing:  Born into a competing plantation, Edward is unhappy with having a smaller operation than the Dalls.  Edward is flattering and over-familiar with Catherine, fake and haughty in personality, self-important, and cruel to his own slaves which clearly does not sit well with Catherine's viewpoint of him.

Phinneas Sarponte:  Overseer, scarred, abandoned from childhood.  He is vicious with the slaves of Eden, and without conscience.  Phinneas also has a disturbing habit of secretly monitoring Catherine's movements.

Esther:  Leah's mother, and Catherine's surrogate slave-mother.

3. Structural Appointments:
From the present-day frame, Meghan's point of view, Readers open an undisturbed time-capsule to see the elegant, ghostly remains of Eden's horrific past. What will Meg do about her personal connection to this family legacy, and what will become of Eden's multimillion-dollar estate?  We oscillate between this present day trajectory, and that of the 1800's viewpoint of Catherine.  Catherine mirrors Meg's journey, in the unraveling of truths, to the core of her own family corruption's question-marked source.

What connects these two realities across time and space, are compelling linking devices found, or discovered period-clues revealing pieces of insight into the mystery story. Art, Literature (in form of period journal), and Music, make up the cultural puzzle of alluring historical clues, winningly compelling us to read on, for answers to the very end.

4. "Visuality"/ Sensory Appeal:
Erika displays a film sensibility with her story in such literary moments as with visualizing the sapphire sheen of a dress, which then transitions with memory, into traveling across the Atlantic ocean. The Author never feels trapped inside her conjured images, capable of turning a beautiful image around on a literary dime, into the contrasting mood of her present-day character, in mourning.  How she perceives the gorgeous ocean view...“pale dead faces seemed to rise and fall in the waves beneath her.”

The world of Nevis surrounding Eden, is a steadily layering evocation of lushness and rawness, of rushing waterfalls, sensuous lagoons, flowers colored like lapis lazuli, or this offering, “Coconut palms rippled along the opening of the cave like underwater seaweed.” There is a diversity of colors to the palette the Author layers with, like oil paints, to illustrate this world's totality.  These details of exotic variety only become brushed in or layered, when the actions within the narrative, suits the flourish.

5. Thematic / Mythic Appeal:
Human slavery is an age-old affliction of existence, destroying entire generations of families and cultures.  Black slavery to white overlords on Nevis, is an emotionally-charged arena of tragic proportions. Robuck mines the heart of her story's tragedy to impacting, dramatic depth.  Especially because the Author crafts organic connections, like the encroaching vines of Nevis, which eventually choke into the violently personal.

Shame and family secrets.  Great wealth often comes with a human price-tag. This is a deep truth in the case of Meghan's old-money, family history. The universal question posed to Meg, regarding inherited affluence, and also the heart of mourning her morally-questionable father's passing, is:  How does one reconcile acquiring vast, personal wealth, when it is established on a foundation of enormous human suffering? What becomes the condition of the corrupted soul who accepts such an advantage?  This troubling question resonates in "Receive Me Falling," across the blood-lines of generations.

A painted wall-mural of "The Fall" discovered in the vine-enshrouded dining room: …Eve handing Adam the apple, as she gazes lustily at the offering, a serpent coiling around her arm. The serpent’s head is that of a cherub representing the beguiling nature of evil. There is a corruption to be found, even in the midst of seeming paradise.

The rain and wind, or the wild elements, are a subtle and then destructive recurring antagonist in this tale. At a surprising moment in Life, the storm may sweep one inside a cave for shelter, or with more dire consequence, sweep a car off the road entirely, changing the course of other lives, forever.

6. Story-Flow:

Meg's story-line is less, action-paced, and closer to introspective. She is searching herself, reviewing where her life has lead her, over the course of many specialty cocktails, and searching for answers in a scholarly direction. Meg researches, compares notes with experts on the subject of the history, and in doing so, draws us intellectually into her discoveries. Meg is no impetuous Catherine, but a modern girl from a high-society cultivation, and so her pace reflects that, methodically.

When Readers pick-up with Catherine on period Nevis, the story becomes more extroverted, quicker-paced,  bolder, and emotionally-involved, along with the open assertiveness of a very action-oriented heroine.  The contrast in these two paces, will give Readers a complementing experience of energies with which to appreciate the novel's overall effect.

7. Innovation/Genre Blend:
"Receive Me Falling" at its core, is a Historical Fiction, but then like a layered cocktail Meghan of the modern story-line may have mixed, the Author hybrids the genre up.  Robuck pours in equal parts, Mystery (in the catalyst of a slave girl's death, among the rest of the dark questions) with Tragic Love Story.  And then a dash of something else which rises to the top of the glass..."Every slave story is a ghost story."

8. Author's Voice/Language:
Erika Robuck’s voice shifts into the antiquated tongue of another character, through a literary device discovered mid-way through this novel.  A specific point-of-view, expressing a deeper history of Eden, unraveling the mysteries for closer inspection, which then laces together what becomes three different generations of women’s perceptions, impressions, or relationships with the land.

In contrast to the external, Erika Robuck will also make sensual, the intimate humanity of exchanges, such as this passage, "The rhythm of Esther’s hands working was soothingly monotonous.  The scrape of the bowl as Esther turned it around and around on the wooden table had the pleasingly muffled quality that had often coaxed Catherine to take over the chore as a child."

Through Meg's voice, the Author's tone is modern, modest, in mourning and internalized, since she is often alone with her personal ghosts.  Catherine's expression bears full-blooded force of will and feelings expressed, as she defies the patriarchal expectations of her times. E.R. herself, guides us through historical, environmental, or societal contexts through the various supporting characters in their respective lines of knowledge, informing Meghan's picture.  It is particularly during these surrounding connections made to researched details, that the Author expresses her passion for all the research she undertook in writing this novel, imbuing her 'fiction' with believable vitality.

9. The After Resonance:
During this time in publishing, when many authors are in sole pursuit of instant cache or a movie franchise, Erika Robuck has written a Literary Novel from her own heart of thematic concerns; and her weighty themes are worth the examination for discerning Readers seeking novels "about something real."

I felt I was transported to a real world, with its rooted rules of beautiful ecology, contrasted starkly with its sudden stormy ferocity, cultural violence, and historic suffering. The Author clearly revels in the deep research of history, mining those details clearly observed beyond cliche, to offer Readers a deeply-grounded and psychologically-satisfying fiction.

The cumulative, layering effect in this novel, illuminates the literary tactical nature of the Author's technique.  By the end of the book, one has gathered enough elemental moments or impressions of this tempestuous, yet sensual Caribbean island, that Nevis (which is a real island) becomes an icon of complex character in itself.  The unpredictable, shifting environmental faces of Nevis, also mirror or express the emotional and spiritual turmoil of states within this drama's central characters.

In "Receive Me Falling," a debut novel by Erika Robuck, the Author sets her own bar high, at excavating and examining those silenced crimes and souls of the human condition...before rising from "The Fall."

"Receive Me Falling," self-published with Elysian Fields Press, may be further discovered at:
http://www.amazon.com/Receive-Me-Falling-Erika-Robuck/dp/0982229801