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ONE BLOOD is the second in the series that features two unusual and intriguing main characters. The time is 1960, the place the Solomon Islands, then a British protectorate, and an area where memories of the terrible battles of the Second World War were still vivid. Sergeant Ben Kella was a teenager in those days, as well as a missionary-school student singled out by the priests as a promising candidate for a colonial education. But another set of priests had already identified Ben as a future aofia, a hereditary spiritual peacekeeper of the Lau people. Now he has a foot in both cultures, the only aofia with a degree from Melbourne University and diplomas from the LSE and the University of Manitoba (of all places) and a sergeant in the Solomon Islands Police Force, under British direction. Sister Conchita, on the other hand, is, despite her (not altogether probable) name, a young American missionary sister who expected to be posted to South America but instead wound up in the Solomons. We find her at a failing mission in the Western District where she has been sent to try to bring a bit of order to the activities of some elderly nuns who are awaiting a replacement for the mission priest who has passed away. She has not been there long before an American tourist is found murdered in the mission church and, since no one else seems particularly interested in his fate, she undertakes an investigation of her own. Kella is supposed to be looking into attacks on a logging operation in the general vicinity, but is curious about the remarkable number of tourists who seem intent on visiting the site of John F. Kennedy's rescue after the sinking of his PT boat some seventeen years previously. Kennedy is in the throes of his campaign for the presidency in which his wartime acts of heroism were prominently featured. It is unclear whether the tourists are paying their respects or, as a kind of precursor to the Swift Boat controversy of John Kerry's later campaign, looking for evidence that Kennedy was not the hero he is being made out to be. While the mystery is well-conceived and sufficiently puzzling, the real attraction of this series is the detailed description of the life on the Islands and the spiritual practices and beliefs of the Solomon Islanders. Though Ben Kella has studied abroad, he has by no means abandoned his respect for his cultural traditions, which provides the author with the opportunity to present them without condescension. Kent is a little less convincing when it comes to Sister Conchita, however. She began her missionary career with a firm belief that the customs and beliefs of the indigenous population were, however admirable, nevertheless wrong, but she is by now beginning to yield a bit on the question. Still, she is a woman who was shaped by the church of the 1940s and 50s, before Vatican 2, and I would have expected her struggle with traditional spiritual power to be more wrenching than it appears. All the same, it was a pleasure to spend a few hours in the company of both Ben and the good sister and in the Solomon Islands as well, somewhere I am reasonably certain never to visit in real life. In short, ONE BLOOD is doubly satisfying, presenting as it does some serious questions about colonialism, assimilation, and the value of traditional belief wrapped up in a diverting mystery. § Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, February 2012
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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