Chapter 4: Great Summer Reads: Crossed Bones

Basic Facts:
Author: Jane Johnson
Book: Crossed Bones (published in the US as The Tenth Gift)
First Published: 2008
I read: The Viking Penguin Books trade paperback edition
First sentence: 'There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they never happened before, like larks that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years.'


I started my Great Summer Reads -reviews last week with The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and will now continue with another entertaining, if somewhat lighter, story: Crossed Bones by the British author Jane Johnson.

The book starts in contemporary London, where Julia Lovat, craft-shop owner and embroidery expert is going to meet her lover Michael, who she describes on the first page of the book as

"...a lecturer in European literature, on which he took an uncompromising post-structualist stance, as if books were just meat for the butcher's block, mere muscle and tendon. bone and cartilage, which required flensing and separating and scrutiny." [p. 1.]

Ugh! Add to that the fact that Michael is also the husband of Julia's friend from university Annie, and you know from the start that he is bad news! I kept thinking why an earth had Julia fallen for him in the first place. Obviously there is something about him, as Julia explains:

"Women loved Michael. We couldn't help ourselves. Whether it was his saturnine features... the louche manner or the look in those glittering black eyes, the cruelly carved mouth or the restless hands, I didn't know. I had lost perspective on such matters long ago." [p. 2.]

Julia and Michael's meeting in a fancy Italian restaurant does not go to Julia's liking. Michael has decided to break up with her and try to patch up things with his wife. As a parting gift he gives the devastated Julia an antique book of embroidery patterns called The Needle Woman's Glorie.

Michael has, in fact, found two copies of the same book, one ordinary, and the other full of markings in archaic hand. It was his intention to give the marking-less book to Julia and sell the other one for a good price. By mistake he gives Julia the book with handwritten notes, and we will soon learn that he is ready to do almost anything to retrieve it, thus adding a sinister thread to Julia's storyline.

While reading the markings on the Needle Woman's Glorie, Julia becomes more and more interested in the story behind those notes, for they have nothing to do with embroidery. They are, in fact, a kind of diary written by certain Catherine Anne Tregenna starting in May 1625.

From there on the book moves between the 17th century story of Catherine 'Cat' Tregenna, a young servant girl, and the story of Julia as she starts a journey to forget Michael and to find out what happened to Cat, who in the summer of 1625 was among a group of villagers taken from a church in Penzance on the Cornish coast by Barbary pirates and taken to Morocco to be sold into slavery.

Johnson has weaved an intriguing tale of adventure and romance with interesting historical facts behind it. In the Author's Note at the end of the book she writes that the attack in Penzance is based on an actual event in July 1625 mentioned in the state papers. Johnson has used various studies on Barbary pirates as well as first hand accounts of English captive's experiences as source materials. She lists the most important sources on the last page ot the book.

I found Crossed Bones hard to put down. At first I had some reservations about the love story developing between Cat and her captor, simply because the captive maiden and the pirate captain falling for each other is such a cliché and exploited to no end in cheap romantic novels, but Johnson manages to pull it off. She portrays the changing emotions between Cat and Sidi Qasem convincingly and beautifully.

"One day, after Catherine had passed almost seven months in the house of her new master, the raïs appeared unheralded and found her sitting in the courtyard with her eyes closed, her broom at her feet, her face upturned to the sky.
'You look like a rose,' he said softly, 'with its petals drinking in the sun.'
Her eyes flew open in shock. She stood up, caught her foot on the broom and almost fell. The corsair caught her neatly and sat her down again. 'Thank you, Sidi Qasem,' she muttered, discomforted.
'Just Qasem is enough.'
'Qasem.'
...
He held the rose against Cat's cheek for a moment so that she smelled its aroma and felt its velvet texture brush her skin, and, although no part of him had touched her, she felt something burning in her nerves, as if a great fire had engulfed the pair of them and she could not breathe. Then the raïs crushed the flower in his had so that its scent filled the air, and walked to the fountain to scatter the petals in its pool.
Cat closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was gone.' [p. 336-338]

I enjoyed both women's tales, but Cat Tregenna was undoubtedly my favorite character in the book. She has to live through terrible events, but she surely is no fainting damsel in distress! She is strong, opinionated, and she has a good head on her shoulders.

"They say God made mankind from clay. He make the djinn from fire. The djinn very dangerous, they have power to possess a man.' He pulled a strand of her red hair loose from the cotton wrap and ran it thoughtfully through his fingers. 'Which are you, Cat'rin: a woman or a djinn?'
'I am a flesh and blood woman,' she said sharply.
'I think maybe that is most dangerous thing of all.' [p. 274]

Crossed Bones is, what I call, a complete story. The stories of Cat and Julia twine closer and closer together until the satisfying happy end, when we will finally learn what connects them.
Highly recommended summer reading!

To learn more about the author visit her official site.