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Carolina Chronicles - Chronological Order #5
Lusty Wind for Carolina
Romance, adventure
562 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1944
About the author
Inglis Fletcher
43 books31 followersInglis Clark Fletcher was widely traveled, but the home of her maternal ancestors—coastal North Carolina—provided the stuff of her successful fiction and the home of her later years. The eldest of three children, Fletcher grew up in Edwardsville, Illinois, a small town populated by many displaced Southerners. As a child she preferred reading, debating, and writing novels to other pastimes, but it was her drawing talent that sent her to study as a teenager at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University. Fletcher displayed some aptitude, but frankly said she was more interested in marriage than sculpture.
Her marriage to a mining engineer sent her directly to some of the roughest of the mining camps in California, Nevada, Colorado, and Alaska. Like many pioneer women isolated on male-dominated frontiers, Fletcher turned to writing as a way of coming to terms with experience. She sold film synopses and wrote poetry, articles, and reviews. When the Fletcher family moved to Oakland (1911) and San Francisco (1925-38), Fletcher found she enjoyed running a lecture bureau. In 1944 the Fletchers moved to historic Bandon Plantation, near Edenton, North Carolina. When Bandon burned in 1963, Fletcher retired to Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1928, Fletcher began her much-publicized tours of Africa, which she had wanted to see, she said, since she had been a child of twelve reading about Livingstone and Burton. From those tours came Fletcher's first novels: The White Leopard (1931) and Red Jasmine (1932). Both offer excellent observation of native craft, culture, and ritual.
The documents she found while researching her Tyrrel County ancestors and the Carolina campaigns of British General Cornwallis sparked her interest in the history of eastern North Carolina. Further research in Carolina libraries and extensive reading in public and private records of the period produced Raleigh's Eden (1940). The novel, the first of Fletcher's meticulously researched Carolina series of historical fiction, uncovered long-forgotten cultural facts of coastal Carolina settlement: Moorish architecture and Arabic residents, Oriental settlers and great estates. Many contemporary readers insisted that much of the novel's setting and events was imaginary, when in fact the novel was faithful to history. Each novel of Fletcher's Carolina series studies a specific era, beginning with the first attempted settlement in the 1580s.
The past provided Fletcher with plots, settings, and characters; it was also the inspiration for her themes. Through individual characters, Fletcher articulates her recurring theme: Land represents freedom and life, especially for Americans. Fletcher was intrigued by the possibility for altering identity that settling the colonies offered Europeans; she also studied the complex interaction of person and environment. The process of settlement provided a metaphor for individual experience: to attain knowledge of land is to attain knowledge of self.
This focus on the individual is circumscribed, however, by Fletcher's greater interest in—and skill in using as narrative—historical detail and fact. Thus, her works are most accurately titled historical romances; and melodramatic as some of her stories are, they attract readers decades after first publication, probably because they imaginatively recreate historical events—a form of fictional verisimilitude that comforts the average reader.
-Source: www.Novelguide.com
Her marriage to a mining engineer sent her directly to some of the roughest of the mining camps in California, Nevada, Colorado, and Alaska. Like many pioneer women isolated on male-dominated frontiers, Fletcher turned to writing as a way of coming to terms with experience. She sold film synopses and wrote poetry, articles, and reviews. When the Fletcher family moved to Oakland (1911) and San Francisco (1925-38), Fletcher found she enjoyed running a lecture bureau. In 1944 the Fletchers moved to historic Bandon Plantation, near Edenton, North Carolina. When Bandon burned in 1963, Fletcher retired to Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1928, Fletcher began her much-publicized tours of Africa, which she had wanted to see, she said, since she had been a child of twelve reading about Livingstone and Burton. From those tours came Fletcher's first novels: The White Leopard (1931) and Red Jasmine (1932). Both offer excellent observation of native craft, culture, and ritual.
The documents she found while researching her Tyrrel County ancestors and the Carolina campaigns of British General Cornwallis sparked her interest in the history of eastern North Carolina. Further research in Carolina libraries and extensive reading in public and private records of the period produced Raleigh's Eden (1940). The novel, the first of Fletcher's meticulously researched Carolina series of historical fiction, uncovered long-forgotten cultural facts of coastal Carolina settlement: Moorish architecture and Arabic residents, Oriental settlers and great estates. Many contemporary readers insisted that much of the novel's setting and events was imaginary, when in fact the novel was faithful to history. Each novel of Fletcher's Carolina series studies a specific era, beginning with the first attempted settlement in the 1580s.
The past provided Fletcher with plots, settings, and characters; it was also the inspiration for her themes. Through individual characters, Fletcher articulates her recurring theme: Land represents freedom and life, especially for Americans. Fletcher was intrigued by the possibility for altering identity that settling the colonies offered Europeans; she also studied the complex interaction of person and environment. The process of settlement provided a metaphor for individual experience: to attain knowledge of land is to attain knowledge of self.
This focus on the individual is circumscribed, however, by Fletcher's greater interest in—and skill in using as narrative—historical detail and fact. Thus, her works are most accurately titled historical romances; and melodramatic as some of her stories are, they attract readers decades after first publication, probably because they imaginatively recreate historical events—a form of fictional verisimilitude that comforts the average reader.
-Source: www.Novelguide.com
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 10, 2022
HAIKU BOOK REVIEW: Lusty Wind for Carolina by Inglis Fletcher
How do you manage
to make swashbuckling pirates
totally boring?
How do you manage
to make swashbuckling pirates
totally boring?
June 16, 2009
It's a shame Fletcher isn't a more widely known writer. She wrote some terrific historical fiction in her day, and I love all the rich detail she adds to all her novels.
And as a true-born native Tarheel, I especially appreciate that she made early North Carolina history come alive in the pages of her novels.
Lusty Wind for Carolina is my favorite of the Carolina chronicles. Fletcher weaves the story around the early 1700's; when Blackbeard the pirate based many of his nefarious operations from the North Carolina coast and even colluded with the Colonial Governor at the time.
Good fiction mixed with certified historical facts. If you're interested in trying out Fletcher, choose this one.
And as a true-born native Tarheel, I especially appreciate that she made early North Carolina history come alive in the pages of her novels.
Lusty Wind for Carolina is my favorite of the Carolina chronicles. Fletcher weaves the story around the early 1700's; when Blackbeard the pirate based many of his nefarious operations from the North Carolina coast and even colluded with the Colonial Governor at the time.
Good fiction mixed with certified historical facts. If you're interested in trying out Fletcher, choose this one.
August 31, 2013
I was excited when I found this book, along with another of Ms. Fletcher's books entitled "The Queen's Gift" at a yard sale last month. I thought this was an excellent book and being a native North Carolinian, I enjoyed reading some of the early history of our state. I look forward to reading other of Ms. Fletcher's books. It made me appreciate the men and women who left England and came to this country and faced so many hardships to try to get their settlements started.
November 17, 2014
Fascinating read! Lusty Wind for Carolina shows the reader what life was for those who traveled from Europe to the New World, or America. The lives of the characters are well detailed. The gossip (lol), the drama, that awesome pirate fight, the romance <3 all kept me from looking away XD I just couldn't put the book doewn :) Inglis Fletcher should be a well know writer, im surprised he isnt :o
July 13, 2025
I normally enjoy reading older books that few people are reading any more, you can find some gems. And you have to be careful not to judge classic literature or even very vintage writing too harshly by today's standards. But this wasn't written long enough ago to even begin to excuse the comfort with which the author depicted slavery, for example describing the singing from the slave cabins as, "good sounds from happy, carefree hearts" and the perception of native Americans as "savages". Plus the romance elements were cringingly poorly written. Had some obviously well researched depictions of the settlement of North Carolina for which it earned a 2nd star.
September 11, 2024
Bored me
December 16, 2016
Another wonderful book from this series (4th of 7). The story centres around a Huguenot family of weavers who have been persecuted in France, then again in Ireland and finally in England at the time of King George the first. When the father hears that there are plots of land available in Carolina and that a ship is being made ready to take settlers there, he encourages a number of other families with varying trades to join him so that he can be awarded one of these plots. When they arrive after an extremely long voyage, they are dismayed to find that the vacant homes they expected to be able to move right into have become derelict and so the first order of business is to build homes. Of course, trees must be cut and timber shaped before this can happen.
The love interest is provided by the attraction between the young woman of the family, Gabrielle, and their former gardener David Moray, her father's bondman, who was freed of his obligations before leaving England by her father and who was accepted to join the settlement. What Gabrielle hasn't known is that David Moray was a soldier before he became a bondman and had been put into this situation by being a supporter of the Jacobites. She tries to conceal her attraction thinking that a bondman is beneath her and she hasn't actually realized that her father has freed him. Other hurdles turn up which make the likelihood that they may have a future together uncertain.
There is much adventure and excitement throughout the book as this was the time of the pirates, whose ships would harry the traders of the colonial coasts and Nassau, occasionally capturing one and taking the valuables and cargo. Some pirates treated their captives humanely and let them go at port but others were bloodthirsty, murderous wretches. The attempts to chase and eliminate them were hampered, sometimes by the negligence of the British Crown in not sending naval ships to reinforce the settlers efforts and sometimes even by the collusion of a corrupt governor who was rumoured to be taking bribes to look the other way.
There were also dangers from unfriendly Indian tribes who would attack and burn the settlements as well as creatures from the uncleared swamps and illness. Many settlements failed because the people could not cope with all the difficulties of carrying on and these families would pack up and return to England.
This book was based on fact and to learn about the heroism and determination of those who did achieve a good life through their efforts gave me a lot of respect for the colonial settlers. I find it interesting to Google the various items and terms I discover within the stories when I have finished. For instance, what is a 'vizard' or a 'leet girl'? I learn so much! The next book in the series waits on my bookshelf and I look forward to reading it.
The love interest is provided by the attraction between the young woman of the family, Gabrielle, and their former gardener David Moray, her father's bondman, who was freed of his obligations before leaving England by her father and who was accepted to join the settlement. What Gabrielle hasn't known is that David Moray was a soldier before he became a bondman and had been put into this situation by being a supporter of the Jacobites. She tries to conceal her attraction thinking that a bondman is beneath her and she hasn't actually realized that her father has freed him. Other hurdles turn up which make the likelihood that they may have a future together uncertain.
There is much adventure and excitement throughout the book as this was the time of the pirates, whose ships would harry the traders of the colonial coasts and Nassau, occasionally capturing one and taking the valuables and cargo. Some pirates treated their captives humanely and let them go at port but others were bloodthirsty, murderous wretches. The attempts to chase and eliminate them were hampered, sometimes by the negligence of the British Crown in not sending naval ships to reinforce the settlers efforts and sometimes even by the collusion of a corrupt governor who was rumoured to be taking bribes to look the other way.
There were also dangers from unfriendly Indian tribes who would attack and burn the settlements as well as creatures from the uncleared swamps and illness. Many settlements failed because the people could not cope with all the difficulties of carrying on and these families would pack up and return to England.
This book was based on fact and to learn about the heroism and determination of those who did achieve a good life through their efforts gave me a lot of respect for the colonial settlers. I find it interesting to Google the various items and terms I discover within the stories when I have finished. For instance, what is a 'vizard' or a 'leet girl'? I learn so much! The next book in the series waits on my bookshelf and I look forward to reading it.
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January 24, 2016from amazon:
The fledgling settlement at the mouth of the Cape Fear is menaced by pirates in this novel set in the early 1700s. Blackbeard, working out of his base on Ocracoke Island, hinders the overseas trade that Huguenot refugee Robert Fontaine hopes will bring prosperity to Carolina coast. Fontaine's daughter's courtship and marriage to the enterprising David Moray add a romantic element to the novel. The action moves back and forth between Europe and points in the New World. This is the third novel in the author's Carolina Series.
The fledgling settlement at the mouth of the Cape Fear is menaced by pirates in this novel set in the early 1700s. Blackbeard, working out of his base on Ocracoke Island, hinders the overseas trade that Huguenot refugee Robert Fontaine hopes will bring prosperity to Carolina coast. Fontaine's daughter's courtship and marriage to the enterprising David Moray add a romantic element to the novel. The action moves back and forth between Europe and points in the New World. This is the third novel in the author's Carolina Series.
March 6, 2014
A story of pirates that plagued the European settlement of the Bahamas and the Carolinas. It is rich in historical detail. It even had a woman pirate. Warning: Fletcher always paints an accurate picture of how black slaves were an integral part of this time in American history. While repugnant, the practice of selling and using humans this way is a historical fact.
November 18, 2009
i just reread this after many years. i still like it, but parts of it bothered me. it's not such a favorite anymore.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews