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Fingerprints of Previous Owners

Rebecca Entel (Goodreads Author)

3.38 · Rating details · 63 Ratings · 23 Reviews

At a Caribbean resort built atop a former slave plantation, Myrna works as a maid by day; by night she trespasses on the resort’s overgrown inland property, secretly excavating the plantation ruins that her island community refuses to acknowledge. Rapt by the crumbling walls of the once slave-owner’s estate, she explores the unspoken history of the plantation—a site where ...more

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Paperback, 212 pages

Published June 13th 2017 by The Unnamed Press

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Jul 01, 2017 Helen Power rated it really liked it

In her debut novel, Entel transports you to a fictional island in the Caribbean, where a resort has been built over the ruins of a plantation. The protagonist, Myrna, is a maid by day, but by night she explores the island, yearning to uncover its secrets. The story builds slowly, its captivating words drawing you in, and the plot culminates in a powerful, thought-provoking conclusion.

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Apr 04, 2018 Kenya (ReviewsMayVary) rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio-books

I’m becoming decreasingly likely to read POC stories written by white authors. (I also read the author’s bio to make sure nothing felt gross before reading). I’m glad I read it. And this old article: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/w... ...more

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Nov 16, 2017 Leo Walsh rated it liked it

We Americans forget that African slaves the United States represented a sliver of the total transported to the New World. Most were employed in the Carribean and South American, harvesting sugar cane and extracting other labor-intensive raw materials to make their owners rich. Rebecca Entel traces the residue of slavery in a small Carribean community in Fingreprints of Previous Owners.

The book's main character, Myrna, is passive, shadowy, and submissive to a fault. And yet, she's given to "explo We Americans forget that African slaves the United States represented a sliver of the total transported to the New World. Most were employed in the Carribean and South American, harvesting sugar cane and extracting other labor-intensive raw materials to make their owners rich. Rebecca Entel traces the residue of slavery in a small Carribean community in Fingreprints of Previous Owners.

The book's main character, Myrna, is passive, shadowy, and submissive to a fault. And yet, she's given to "exploring" the inhospitable inner reaches of her island. I could buy this if she were an exploring, rambunctious ten-year-old, but she's in her twenties, so her exploring without motivation sets me head-scratching.

Myrna's life changes when an African-American tourist brings the journal of the island's main land-(and slave)-owner's journal she'd stumbled upon to the resort where Myrna works as a maid. Unable to speak with the woman due to the company's draconian guest-staff relations policies, she becomes obsessed with the content of the journal. And much like her un-explained need to explore, she becomes oddly fixated on the journal. And makes some strange behavioral choices which seem odd. For instance, why not ask the guest's nanny, a person of about her station, to photocopy the important pages? Or just read it in the guest's room with notepad in hand when the guests were out? Instead, Myrna obsesses, steals the book which threatens her family's economic survival.

Why? Her motivation seems thin.

Though the book's idea intrigued me when I read it in the Chicago Review of Books, Entel's storytelling fell short for me. A fan of Toni Morrison, who's the master of tracing slavery's impact on African-American psyches, I was expecting a lot out of the book. Perhaps it's an unfair comparison, but I found the character motivations (and the almost surreal, inhuman rules the domestic help needed to heed in the resort) weak.

3-stars. It wasn't bad, and it addresses some interesting issues, but there were too many plot, character and motivation 'holes' for me to bump it to 4.

...more

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May 13, 2017 Rachel León rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017, read-in-2017

(4.25 stars, rounded up because it's a small press book)

This remarkable debut novel is set in the Caribbean. Myrna works as a maid for a resort that was built on the grounds of a former slave plantation and unlocks the island's past. It's a quiet novel, but quite beautiful, too.

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Oct 28, 2017 Reikista rated it really liked it

This was an intriguing story of the effect of not speaking about the past of the island at the center of the book, where a slaveholding plantation once existed. Most of the island inhabitants are descendants of the slaves, and their history is so brutal that they prefer not to revisit it. In the meantime, the island is being taken over by a resort that employs the "natives" in menial jobs and obscures the island's history for tourist's sake. When an African American from the US arrives as a gues ...more

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Aug 30, 2017 Gail Bauser rated it really liked it

Those reviewers who have said this book was a nice story about a Caribbean Island have missed the point of the book. In this book, Entel gently explores racial inequities in a way that is not militant or preachy. The reader easily understands the main character, Myrna's, desire to learn about the history of the island's plantation. And Myrna takes us on a journey in which we explore the subtle, and not so subtle, habits in a racially divided resort. This thought provoking story is more than a si ...more

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Apr 17, 2018 Lisa girlsinbooks rated it liked it

Shelves: unfinished-stack

Synopsis:

At a Caribbean resort built atop a former slave plantation, Myrna works as a maid by day; by night she trespasses on the resort’s overgrown inland property, secretly excavating the plantation ruins the locals refuse to acknowledge. Myrna’s mother has stopped speaking and her friends are focused on surviving the present, but Myrna is drawn to Cruffey Island’s violent past. With the arrival of Mrs. Manion, a wealthy African-American, also comes new information about the history of the sla ...more

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Mar 23, 2017 Wisconsin Alumni added it

Shelves: fiction

Rebecca Entel MA’00, PhD’07
Author

From the author:
At a Caribbean resort built atop a former slave plantation, Myrna works as a maid by day; by night she trespasses on the resort’s overgrown inland property, secretly excavating the plantation ruins.

Rapt by the crumbling walls of the once slave-owner’s estate, she explores the unspoken history of the plantation — a site where her ancestors once worked the land, but which the resort now uses as a lookout point for tourists.

When Myrna discovers a boo ...more

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Oct 27, 2017 Lucy Takeda rated it liked it

There is some lovely use of language and poetry in this novel. I did run across some phrases that left me bemused. It is a haunting story.
Myrna lives on a Caribbean island that used to be a plantation. A luxury resort arrives, promising ample employment, but forbidding the locals to wander inland. The resort also rewrites history. The pay the employees receive is minimal, and they are treated horrendously. Myrna insists on searching for the real past. Then a black woman arrives at the resort as ...more

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Mar 21, 2018 Carla rated it liked it

Shelves: lost-interest, 2018

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for the free copy to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Footprints of Previous Owners by Rebecca Entel explores the violent past of a slave plantation on a fictional island in the Caribbean.

I read this one while in Mexico, so while the tropical descriptions were easy to visualize, Entel’s descriptive writing helped me paint those images in my head with ease.

Myrna, the book’s main character, is a maid at the tourist resort by day, but at night she explores the ...more

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Mar 30, 2018 Susan rated it liked it

I dig books about dark secrets lurking beneath shiny veneers, so the premise of this novel definitely caught my attention. The rich, colorful Caribbean setting, which Entel brings to vivid life, also reeled me in. Unfortunately, neither was enough to keep me engaged in this slow, dull story. Long, dense chapters; choppy prose littered with fragmented sentences; and the lack of any real plot or action combined to make this a tedious, boring read for me. If I hadn't promised a tour host that I'd r ...more

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Jun 12, 2017 Stephanie rated it really liked it

Shelves: giveaways

I received a copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway.

I really liked this book. The story was emotional and interesting, and the writing was a great contributor to that. At the beginning of the advanced copy I received, there was an author's note about her voice as a non-Caribbean author telling a colonization/slavery story. I think her choice to include that was a good one. As I'm a white woman myself, it's not really my place to say if she handled the culture and topic with appropriate res ...more

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Sep 26, 2017 Bobbie N rated it liked it

Myrna works as a maid at a resort built on top of a former slave plantation, at night trespassing on the resort's overgrown inland property, secretly excavating the ruins of the plantation that the locals refuse to acknowledge. When a wealthy African-American arrives at the resort with new information about the history of the slave owner's estate, tensions erupt between the resort and the local island community.

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Sep 30, 2017 Sharon rated it really liked it

An unusual, thought provoking tale set on a tiny Caribbean island with ruins of a plantation and a single resort and those native to the island. The more you read, the more you must read and the more involved you become. This book makes you question many things that you never gave a thought to before.

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Jul 25, 2017 Hope rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017-reading

This book is very thought provoking. There's a vague, unsettled thread within this book which I think is true to life. Race relations are always under the surface and cause tension - even when things feel smooth.
The assholery of the resort is just blood-boiling. I hate when businesses do that.

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Feb 17, 2018 Leah Cripps rated it it was ok

It took far too long for the history and the true plot to be revealed. This would have been a better book written as a factual non-fiction book. I found the character motivations unconvincing and tedious.

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Jul 14, 2017 Clayton H rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2017

Could not connect with this book, I wanted to like it, but not a chance. Myrna is a relatable character but she is not enough of a redeeming feature to keep a thin plot interesting. Sadly, this will be the lowest rating I have ever given as a member on Goodreads.

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