What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Meanwhile, Elfriede's navigation through the world of German nobility delivers some of the book's most heartbreaking and heart-stopping chapters. Then some strong amount of time go by (where these triggers are kept away), and maybe have these re-surface in the next school year. For when he tells Xanthe and Xavier about this, they realize that Nina may have gone back to one of the most dangerous times and places in history: France on the eve of its revolution. Which is key to this book seeing as Manuel being an impressive photographer is essential to the story and his coping mechanisms, with key moments framed in a drawn-on rectangle to imply looking through a camera.

Struggling with anxiety after witnessing a harrowing instance of gun violence, Manuel Soto copes through photography, using his cell-phone camera to find anchors that keep him grounded. The duke—as governor of this island paradise with a dark side—and the duchess are portrayed as sometimes helping, but often contributing to, its problems of social inequality, racial tension, and corruption; they could also be complicit in the murder of gold mine owner Harry Oakes, and there are whispers of their Nazi sympathies. When I started reading this historical fiction book I was excited to learn Wallis Simpson and her husband, the former king of England who gave up the throne, were going to be a characters in the story. I was fortunate enough to get a copy of this book for that article and wanted to talk a little about it here, too. Back in the 1900's there was no such thing as postpartum depression so no one really knew what to do with her.There’s another storyline in the book from the early 1900s with Elfriede, a German Baroness who suffers from post-partum depression. But as she infiltrates the Duke and Duchess’s social circle, and the powerful cabal that controls the islands’ political and financial affairs, she uncovers evidence that beneath the glister of Wallis and Edward’s marriage lies a complex—and even treasonous—reality. In a European accent, Maarleveld also delivers the the account of a Swiss woman named Elfride, following her from 1900 through WWI, and recounting the lives of her descendants. Once she is able to get into their social circle, Lulu soon realizes this royal couple are up to no good.

There she meets an Englishman recouping from pneumonia and they have a soulmates connection but with Elfriede still married, they can't really act on anything. This piece of historical fiction, using the backdrop of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as residents of the Bahamian Government House, is superb. The perfect blend of fact and fiction sprinkled with intrigue, espionage and royalty make Beatriz Williams the ‘Queen of Historical Fiction. Even the ends was a surprise, something I wasn’t expecting and it made the book all the more enjoyable.Then Nassau’s wealthiest man is murdered in one of the most notorious cases of the century, and the resulting coverup reeks of royal privilege. I went into it expecting one storyline, the one about the Windsors, but it was just one of several and not even the main one. The focus is more microcosm and how the Wars are personally affecting these two women and how it will connect them. A main character of the book, Lulu, heads to the Bahamas in the early 1940s in the hopes of gaining traction with the royal couple to share gossip with her US magazine readers.