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The historical novel by Olive Collins titled, The Tide Between Us, is an intergenerational story about a family from the early 1800s till the late 1900s. It involves an aristocratic British man transporting a ship full of young Irish boys to the Caribbean to work on his sugar plantation. There are also black slaves there and friendships develop and children are born. Families become intertwined as slave owners also have children with the same slaves as the Irish slaves. The Irish boys grow up and become indentured servants when they become of age and eventually become land owners themselves. Slavery is ended during the 19th century in the Caribbean causing a free population of mixed heritage. The story ends in Ireland when some of the descendants obtain ownership of the original estate where the aristocratic British man had transported the boys to Jamaica from almost two hundred years prior. The videos that follow describe the transportation of Irish slaves to the Caribbean which began in the mid 1600s and continued into the 1800s. The first video describes an organization attempting to use DNA to reunite the families in Ireland and in the Caribbean. The second video describes the sugar industry and its role in slavery in the Caribbean. It is interesting to note that during the time the young man Art, in the story is in Jamaica, the plantation he is working on changes the way it does business. It quits exporting sugar and begins to make it into rum prior to exportation. Please click on the author's name and book title above to follow the links to more information and enjoy the two videos that follow. This book is the first of a trilogy by this author about the Irish. I have already downloaded the second book and am looking forward to starting it soon. People interested in family history and people interested in history in general will enjoy this historical novel. I highly recommend it.
