The Night of the Rambler: A Novel

By Montague Kobbé

This tale of a little-known revolt in the Caribbean is “part literary thriller, part revolutionary study, part epic historical narrative”(Joe Meno, author of The Boy Detective Fails).
 
A sympathetic and often humorous account of an obscure episode in the history of the remote island of Anguilla, in the northeast Caribbean, The Night of the Rambler revolves around a haphazard attempt by a dozen or so locals to invade neighboring St. Kitts, in an effort to topple the government of the recently established Associated State of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla.
 
Ostensibly, the action maps the fifteen hours that lapse between the moment when the “rebels” board The Rambler, the thirty-five-foot motorboat that will take them across the strait to St. Kitts, and the break of dawn the following day, when it becomes obvious that the unaccomplished mission will have to be aborted. The novel is at turns highly dramatic and hilarious, all the while bringing deep honesty to the often-unexamined righteousness of revolution.
 
“Colorful detours into native lore, such as a rich Dutchman’s fabled courtship of a local beauty, strike grace notes that echo Marquez. . . . Readers . . . will be rewarded with the little-known tale of how the underdog country demanded its own place in the 20th century.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“This is a book about revolution and the underdog, about a small, isolated island fighting for recognition, opportunity and justice; it is a compelling tale about a curious historical episode, but also a vital look at priorities, perspective and the right to live in dignity, issues that, much like Anguilla’s rebellion of 1967, are all too easily forgotten.” —The Island Review
 
“This is a fine novel, a surprising novel, perhaps the first true novel I have read about the nature of revolutions. The Night of the Rambler is ambitious, smart, and successful. It raises all sorts of questions about what revolutions want, how revolutions fail, and why revolutions are necessary—challenging all the while how history remembers them.” —Percival Everett, author of Erasure

• Language: English
• Publisher: Akashic Books
• Release date: Aug 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781617751820

Montague Kobbé

Montague Kobbé was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and has resided in the UK, Germany, and Spain. He has had close ties to Anguilla for over thirty years and maintains a regular literary column in Sint Maarten's Daily Herald. His work has been published in the New York Times and El Nacional (Venezuela) among many other media outlets. He is the author of The Night of the Rambler (a finalist for the Premio Literario Casa de las Américas) and Tales of Bed Sheets and Departure Lounges. He currently lives in London.

Book preview

PREFACE

THE BURNING QUESTION

And then the unthinkable happened: on May 29, 1967, a crowd of Anguillians gathered to protest, not unlike they had done in January of the same year, upon the arrival of the British local government expert who was forced to depart the island before delivering his message—whatever that might have been. They gathered and expressed their discontent at the notion of shared sovereignty within the tripartite state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, much like they had done during the Statehood Queen Show of February 1967. It was precisely on that occasion when the image of Alwyn Cooke, hanging precariously from the edge of his truck, holding a wild ball of fire in his right hand, provided the people of the island with the first symbol of a revolution that had not yet started. They gathered to listen to their leaders’ appeals, alternatives, solutions, ideas. They gathered at Burrowes Park, at the heart of The Valley, the capital, and then they took matters into their own hands. On May 29, 1967, the people of Anguilla flocked to the streets, en masse in the park, marched toward the police station, and, spontaneously but vehemently, demanded the thirteen-man police task force leave the island, never to come back. Less than twenty-four hours later the last few policemen were boarding the freighter that would take them on their sixty-five-mile journey back to St. Kitts. Just like that, an insignificant speck of coral on the northeastern corner of the Caribbean had revolted.

At that point the situation was critical: hardly anybody was aware of the existence, let alone the whereabouts, of Anguilla; a fifteen-man peacekeeping committee acting as provisional government fruitlessly sought protection from Great Britain, from Canada, from the USA; the state of affairs on the island was precarious, and an invasion from St. Kitts seemed imminent. Intrepidly, Anguillians took the initiative, devised a shambolic attack on St. Kitts, and on the morning of June 10, 1967 embarked upon what must stand out among the most naive failures in the history of military enterprises.

When the men within St. Kitts’s Defence Force camp heard the distant drumming of the shots fired outside, they didn’t have the slightest clue of what was happening. Despite the fact that hundreds of Kittitians had been informed of the insurgency in an effort to foster local support for it, not one member of St. Kitts’s police and security forces had been privy to this particular piece of information. Not long afterward, though, once they heard the loud roar of the dynamite setting the world alight, they knew that someone had opened wide the gates of hell. Nobody cared to ask who. The pertinent question at that time was whether to run for their lives or to put in place a plan to stifle the momentum of the rebels.

As it turned out, hell was not all that adept in running loose. By the time the faux coup had crashed against the walls of its own incompetence, looking for the people responsible for this minor embarrassment was no longer relevant. Instead, the local government jumped at the opportunity to declare a state of emergency, immediately implemented measures to tighten its (already watertight) grip on the country’s structure of power, and wasted one month persecuting its political enemies. The question as to who had let hell loose in the early hours of the morning of June 10, 1967 went down in history begging.

And yet, fortuitously, the mission achieved its goals. Faced with the threat of an armed uprising—faced, really, with the unthinkable—Premier Bradshaw focused on settling the score at home first, spent the following month turning St. Kitts into a 100 percent safe, absolutely invasion-resistant bunker. Now, in the 350 years of colonial history of Anguilla, its inhabitants have not exactly built a strong reputation for the pace and efficiency of their work. Or, to put it more obliquely, if Costa Rica is the Switzerland of the Americas, Anguilla is unequivocally not the Germany of the Caribbean. However, whether it was due to the urgency of the matter, or to the whimsical turnings of Providence, the peacekeeping committee acted in all haste, with uncharacteristic foresight and prudence, to build the institutional edifice required to rule a country. By July 11, 1967, one month and one day after the attempted attack on St. Kitts, Anguilla already had a small army of fifty servicemen, an anthem, a constitution, a revolutionary leader, a patriarch, and a foreign advisor.

The provisional government had also organized an internal referendum to decide upon the question of secession from the state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla. The overwhelming result of 1,813 votes in favor to five against, out of 2,554 registered voters, forever changed the course of Anguilla’s destiny. Most importantly, though, Anguilla caught the eye of the world while Bradshaw’s attention had drifted toward internal affairs. By the time St. Kitts looked back in the direction of Anguilla it was too late to use force—and diplomacy was not going to lead anywhere favorable. This was the extraordinary legacy of one of the most ridiculous episodes anyone will ever find in the annals of revolutions. This was the beginning of the first success of a country whose history, up to that point, had been little more than a catalog of hardship and failure.

The following is a fictionalized and utterly false account of the events that most definitely did not happen on June 9–10, 1967. And yet, while all characters in this story are little green men and women running around inside my head, the events that served as inspiration, the historical facts, as it were, must be considered no less than a sibling of the tale contained in these pages: the story I didn’t write, but could have written—the book this could have been, but isn’t.

CHAPTER I

MAY DE LORD BE WIT’ US

When a new pocket of lights flared farther to the east through the deep blackness of the night, Sol Campbell finally vented the rage that had been eating up his insides, and with an intimidating Yo Rude! issued the prelude to his duel. He seemed to stand on higher ground as his voice rose above the rest to ask, Wha’ dem lights over dere be? Tell me, nuh—wha’ dat light yonder be, if it ain’ St. Kitts? Instantly, the roar of the engine receded and the surge behind the boat caught up with its hull, softly thrusting the sixteen passengers forward. Awash at sea, The Rambler drifted helplessly in no particular direction. The calm Caribbean waters rocked the boat melodiously, intensely, in the middle of the night, as its 115-horsepower diesel engine gargled on idle. Every now and then a wayward wave or ripple crashed against the underside of the hull, letting out an empty thump that reverberated inside the men aboard. There was no moon. The night, dark and clear all at once, was made thicker by a sinister haze which veiled the stars and the lights in the distance. Behind the wheel, on the bridge of the thirty-five-foot boat, a bitter argument ensued.

Rude Thompson, captain for a day, had been entrusted to take The Rambler to the northwestern shores of St. Kitts in order to meet local members of the insurrection at the stroke of midnight. But that very stroke had gone at least half an hour earlier, as they’d seemingly found themselves off the coast of, not St. Kitts, but the neighboring St. Eustatius.

The men had gathered at Island Harbour, on the northeastern end of Anguilla, that very day to pack the boat with guns, ammo, and a few provisions for the journey. The mission had been kept secret and the men involved had camped near the training site at Junks Hole Beach for the past three days, away from their families for added security. The Rambler was loaded for the sixty-five-mile journey southward on Friday, June 9, shortly after lunch. Alwyn Cooke, the mastermind behind the plan, showed up uncharacteristically late. He wore his usual gray pressed trousers and white cotton shirt buttoned up to the top. Yet there was something ragged about his looks—something that went beyond the three-day beard and the sunken rings around his eyes. He brought with him the dark green canvas bag in which, ten days earlier, the police task force had intended to take their guns, before they were expelled from the island.

At that time, Inspector Edmonton, head of the police task force, had carried the bag to the Piper Aztec that was supposed to take him and the remaining four members of the force back to St. Kitts. On his way from the small wooden building that was Wallblake Airport to the equally small propeller aircraft sitting on the dust strip, he was met by Rude Thompson, Gaynor Henderson, and the collective indignation against the man whose ill judgment had led to widespread violence months before, during the Statehood Queen Show. Rude’s first request for Inspector Edmonton to drop de bag an’ go on was more of an order. The inspector’s reluctance to obey gave Gaynor the opportunity he craved to restore the pride that had been taken from him three months earlier, on the evening when he was thrown in the dungeon. So, emboldened by the circumstances, Gaynor took a .32 pistol from behind his back and shoved it right inside Inspector Edmonton’s mouth, until it polished his uvula. You ever taste de taste of lead in you mout’? Inspector Edmonton had no chance to reply. You better drop de bag unless dis is de last t’ing you ever wan’ taste.

Alwyn Cooke had thought the gesture excessively violent, but ten days had shaken Anguilla’s world, and he presently approached with the same bag, except that it now looked heavier, bulkier. Come to de back of de truck. Is t’ree more of dem back dere. His shrill voice cut through the air and opened up the silence. By three in the afternoon, The Rambler was loaded with most of the equipment the police force had left behind: six Lee-Enfield Mk III* .303 rifles, such as the ones used during World War I; five Winchester Model 54 .30-06 rifles, the predecessor to the famous Model 70, launched in 1936; four M1 Garand .30-06 semiautomatic rifles; four M1 .30 semiautomatic carbines; eight hundred rounds of ammunition; two boxes of dynamite; four detonators; and four cans of tear gas. In addition to the material confiscated from the task force was a supply of more modern equipment from the USA, including five automatic .25 handguns, three .32-caliber pistols, and, crucially, two M16 automatic rifles and two Browning M1919 .30-caliber machine guns, both of which were popular at the time with the American army, particularly in Vietnam.

However antiquated, The Rambler was equipped with an arsenal big enough to arm a small militia. Which is precisely what Alwyn Cooke, Rude Thompson, and the rest of the organizers of the operation expected to find in St. Kitts that night awaiting their aid. They would be in for a surprise—but not yet. Right now, burdened with the weight of sixteen passengers plus five hundred pounds of guns and ammo, the main concern was how much the boat could carry without sinking. Therefore, provisions for a trip that was to last at least nine hours were kept to a bare minimum: a demijohn of water, some dry crisps, and homemade johnnycakes—a local delicacy made of cornmeal and traditionally baked by women for their men to eat on the journey (later transfigured into johnny)—freshly prepared by some of the more diligent wives.

The Rambler was loaded and ready to go by about three in the afternoon, but the sun wouldn’t set until some four hours later. The island, in complete control of the rebel government for the previous ten days, had been inaccessible to foreign traffic for forty-eight hours. Oil drums were carried in pickup trucks and lined up on the dirt strip of the airport to prevent any aircraft from landing, and all beaching points (there were no ports in Anguilla) had been guarded and officially closed to the outside world in an effort to keep any news of a plan which was largely unknown to the population in the first place from leaking to the enemy.

Consequently, at three in the afternoon of Friday, June 9, 1967, The Rambler became the first boat to leave Anguilla’s territorial waters in two days. It sailed eastward from Island Harbour, and faced the tough Atlantic tides off the northeastern part of the island, before making the choppy journey past the cliffs of Harbour Ridge. Then it reached the treacherous seas off Captain’s Bay, only to drift into the narrow passage between Windward Point, the easternmost part of the island, and Scrub Island, a midsized cay to the east that still housed a dirt strip built as part of that obscure episode of World War II—the Destroyers-for-Bases Agreement.

By four in the afternoon, The Rambler was cutting across the strait between Anguilla and Scrub, steering away from the waves that rolled in all the way from Africa, and heading in the general direction of St. Kitts and the rest of the Caribbean atoll. The first three miles of the passage were expected to be among the roughest of the day, but the sun still burned ferociously in the sky and the men aboard The Rambler still itched with desire to reach St. Kitts and get to the task at hand as the boat left Scrub Island behind on its port side and stopped challenging the high crests of the vigorous sea in order to roll with them toward Tintamarre, a.k.a. Flat Island, about ten nautical miles away.

Like Scrub, Tintamarre is a midsized cay just off the (northwestern) coast of its bigger sister island, St. Martin, which had little of interest for honest citizens outside one or two unspoiled beaches of white sand and turquoise water. Like Scrub, the island is flat enough to home a dirt strip, but with facilities in Dutch Sint Maarten to the south, Scrub Island to the east, and Dog Island to the north, the American army felt adequately prepared to monitor the traffic and disrupt the passage of German U-boats through the Anguilla channel. Perhaps understandably, their plans did not foresee the apparition of Jan van Hoeppel, a mercenary adventurer—half Quixote, half Saint Exupéry—who, in collaboration with the Vichy government across the French Caribbean, would foil the American initiative and develop a sophisticated replenishing station in Tintamarre for the Nazi navy to enjoy fresh fruit and water from Martinique, from Guadeloupe, from Dominica, while their submarines were refueled and replenished.

Alas, German interest in the Caribbean was short-lived, so when the traffic diminished and, indeed, the bad guys were defeated, van Hoeppel turned to aviation for inspiration: he already owned a four-seat, high-wing, single-engine Stinson Reliant, which he dubbed La Cucaracha, so he flattened the ground in Tintamarre, invested the money he had made collaborating with the Vichy in two ten-seat Stinson Model A trimotors and a six-seat Stinson Detroiter, and, just like that, established the first operational airline in the northeastern Caribbean: Air Atlantique.

Van Hoeppel had long shifted his focus from airplanes to real estate, and the role he plays in this tale hangs in the balance of untyped words, but as sixteen restless men approached the western shores of Tintamarre on the first stage in their voyage, the remnants of a fleet that had been reduced by frequent accidents and decimated by a severe hurricane more than fifteen years back glowed with a rare air of grandeur, of relevance, as if, somehow, one impossible dream could be mirrored in another. Then Alwyn Cooke intervened. Cut de engine. Rude Thompson looked at his comrade with a trace of disbelief, but did not venture as far as to question the order. A few seconds elapsed before Wha’ we do now?—a voice so anonymous echoed that it seemed to each of the passengers in the boat as if they had all asked the question at the same time. We wait for night to fall, and the ensuing silence filled the air separating the flat soil of Tintamarre to the starboard and the angled hills of St. Barths in the distance, shadowed in the center by a thick pocket of rain that poured down somewhere at sea, between The Rambler and the island.

It had just gone five when the diesel engine of The Rambler fell silent. The first ten miles of the journey had taken a good two hours, but the sun still hung high in the sky, far above the horizon line. Alwyn Cooke intended to minimize the chances of being caught crossing the St. Barths channel by lingering near Tintamarre until night had fallen. On Friday, June 9, 1967, the sun set at 6:46 p.m. The tropical crepuscule, short-lived and dramatic, shed daylight for another half hour. Hence, The Rambler and its crew had to sit tight and wait out at sea, off the eastern end of Tintamarre, for two full hours. Of which, the first thirty, forty minutes were spent in utter silence, as if Alwyn Cooke’s instruction had dropped a tacit curfew on words.

But it had not been Alwyn Cooke, nor anyone else, who had imposed the silence. Instead, it was the simultaneous reaction of sixteen men, all far too absorbed in their own worries to notice the world outside. To the three American mercenaries aboard The Rambler, all scarred from their exploits in Vietnam, this might have seemed like a natural reaction. However, to the average West Indian, a group of sixteen men sitting in silence for this long in a small boat was an aberration. A talkative people steeped in a long tradition of humor and faith, West Indians are not prone to fall silent—to let pass an opportunity to lambaste one another with a copious dose of pique—on any occasion. But this was more than just an adventure, and more was at stake than any of them would have cared to admit: here were joined at once interests that were national and personal, common and individual; here was invested much hope, much time, and much money—money to pay for guns, money to pay for experienced men of war, money that in Anguilla in 1967 simply did not exist. Many of these thoughts never even crossed the minds of any of the sixteen men aboard The Rambler. Nevertheless, the tension, the fear, the uncertainty that reigned was adequately represented in this drawn-out silence that lasted from the moment Alwyn Cooke uttered his order to wait for night, until sometime after six, when the red sun approaching the horizon inexplicably triggered in the young Walter Stewart a need to hum the melody of The Lord Is My Shepherd.

Walter Stewart sat at the back of The Rambler, where the fumes of the diesel engine had sent him on a dizzying slumber from the start. But the boat had been drifting for a good hour, and, if anything, the pervading smell was of sweat and salt, of men at sea, and Walter had often gone out fishing with his grandfather, Connor, the head of the Stewart family from Island Harbour, and sometimes they had traveled as far north as Sombrero Island, forty miles away from Anguilla and right in the middle of the Anegada Passage, so Walter knew for a fact that what he was feeling was not seasickness, and yet he could not help the vacuum in his stomach, and the spinning inside his head, and the dryness in his mouth, the taste of bitter fullness in his larynx.

Although Walter was merely a kid—barely fifteen years old—he had been part of the revolution from the start. He had been there, getting his placard smashed on his head, in January 1967, when Rude Thompson and Alwyn Cooke recruited people to follow Chief Minister Bradshaw during his official visit to the island; he had proved one of the most vociferous hecklers at the speeches the statesman from St. Kitts had tried to deliver in Anguilla to discuss the concept of statehood; and he had been there again, watching from a safe distance, as the very same policemen who had so magnanimously shared their tear gas with the crowd left the island in an equally gallant gesture, on the morning of May 30.

Ten days later, the commitment and loyalty of Walter Stewart toward the revolutionary cause was neither challenged nor questioned. What was being put to the test, however, was his stomach—until the sun, hanging low over the horizon, reddened by a thickening mist, put a hymn he loathed in his mind. Then, slowly, he let out a wail, which turned itself into a quiet hum, which led to a whisper. By the time he started whistling the tune, Mario Gómez, one of the American mercenaries onboard, had had enough. What the hell are you singing that for, boy? The only lord who can help you now is this: and he held the long, angular shell of a .30-caliber missile upright in his left hand, between his index finger and thumb. His pale young face squirmed in a failed attempt to look tough. Who the hell would put all that junk in a deserted rock, anyway? asked Gómez, referring to the carcasses of whatever remained of the fleet of Air Atlantique. Corporal Gómez did not think Walter Stewart would be headstrong enough to go on with his gospel, but he did not want to risk it either, nor did he feel in the frame of mind to allow the protracted silence to continue. Meanwhile, Glenallen Rawlingson, a quiet, determined young man with bulging eyes, inward-folded lips, and an anthropoid gait, was also happy to break the silence. He was tall and thin, and darker than the average Anguillian. Unlike most of the men in the expedition, he did not stem from the eastern end of the island, but from the more central South Hill. In a spontaneous burst of energy, he explained, maybe to Corporal Gómez, maybe to everyone else, how once, not too long ago, Flat Island had been an important source of income to Anguillians. My uncle did till de soil of dat land, when it belong to Mr. D.C. Glenallen spoke the truth, but for those who did not know the story it was hard to imagine, adrift, awaiting the end of the day, that anything at all might have ever taken place on that godforsaken rock. Yet Glenallen’s voice was less abrasive than the silence it replaced, so Corporal Gómez and the rest of the crew allowed him to continue his tale about an eccentric Dutch heir who had come to this far corner of the earth to dissociate himself from the civilized world and who had decided to set up his kingdom in Tintamarre, where he built a luxurious palace and raised cattle and grew cotton and, implausibly, became a major purchaser of Anguilla’s one and only export: labor. Alas, there was to be no happy ending to the fairy tale. D.C.’s death was mysterious, sad, and, as all death must be, lonely, but also categorical, because he failed to plant in Tintamarre or in the womb of his beloved Elaine Nisbet, or anywhere else for that matter, the seed of his spring and consequently brought with the end of his life the end, too, of his lineage and of a Caribbean extravaganza like no other. But this episode is too important to be dispatched as an aside. So let’s press the pause button and allow D.C. van Ruijtenbeek to linger in space for the time being, while we call upon the voice of the great Héctor Lavoe to put an end to Glenallen Rawlingson’s anecdote with the unmistakable melody of Todo tiene su final / nada dura para siempre . . .

Back in The Rambler, where it’s unlikely that anyone had ever heard of Héctor Lavoe, except perhaps for Corporal Gómez, who had Borinquen running through his veins, the atmosphere on the boat loosened somewhat, awarding an air of normality to a situation that was anything but normal. When the sunset arrived it caught most of the men off guard. The tide had taken The Rambler slightly to the north of Tintamarre and the sun could be seen sinking in full behind the mass of water separating Anguilla from St. Martin. There was no afterglow. There was, however, a significant glow emanating from the fully restored and expanded electricity lines in St. Martin, which, since the devastating passage of Hurricane

Reviews for The Night of the Rambler

[jcambridge_4 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

As a frequent visitor to the Caribbean and one who follows events in that region, I was disappointed with this book. I found it very difficult to get into and felt it could have used a LOT of editing. Interesting story, but not very well-written.

[banjo123 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In 1967, Britain granted internal autonomy to their Caribbean colonies, but linked together the islands of St. Kitts, Nevin, and Anguilla. This annoyed the Anguillans, who, for some reason, wanted to continue to be British subjects, but hated being lumped together with St. Kitts. There was some sort of revolution, or rebellion, which unfolded as a series of errors, and led to the Anguillans getting what they wanted.I knew nothing about this before reading [The Night of the Rambler]. Unfortunately, I still don't know much about it, because the book is a novel, with some basis on historical facts. I found reading the book frustrating because I was never sure what was real and what was imagined. I wish that Kobbe had written a non-fiction narrative of those events, instead. It's very intriguing--I tried to get some more background through a google search, and wikipedia, but information on the history of Anguilla is very limited on the web.

[jeanomario · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Decide...fiction or non-fiction. This book was not very interesting and, though I tried to stay with it, I wondered what was fact and what was not. This one may go into the re-gifting bin for someone else to try.

[alexander19-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is about men in the Caribbean trying to navigate and just live through the political turmoil during the 1960s. Echoes of Junot Diaz can be felt in the book, and it gave me a better understanding of what people really had to go through back then. It gives you a better respect for what people fought for themselves and there families.

[elleceetee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Night of the Rambler tells a fictionalized story of a failed coup on St. Kitts by revolutionary leaders of Anguilla in the late 1960s. In reality, in the 1960s, the island of Anguilla was part of a group with St. Kitts and Nevis and the people of Anguilla revolted - not to become independent! - but to be a British territory independent of St. Kitts and Nevis. This was accomplished in 1980 and it remains a British overseas territory. The idea for the Night of the Rambler takes this time in history and introduces the "what if?" idea that a group of these revolutionaries went on to accomplish a coup on St. Kitts. However, the revolutionaries as a group are not schooled in the art of war and the coup d'etat fails after a series of errors and gross misinformation. The main leaders of the coup are fleshed out in flashback chapters that illuminate both the history of the island and details of the main characters pasts that inform their actions in the present. Finally, the book is told from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator, who relates the fact of the case - sometimes with his or her own observations as if he or she is telling the story to the reader. There is almost not dialogue and what is there is in italics as if the narrator is giving us a direct quote that s/he heard. I asked to review this book because I am interested in Caribbean history. That said, part of this book were a bit of a chore to get through. I didn't love the device of the omniscient narrator. That device puts a wall between the reader and the characters and I had a harder time getting into the story because of it. I think maybe, in some ways, this single night wasn't enough. At the beginning, I wasn't invested enough in this coup and these characters to care about how it came out for them - perhaps telling a more linear narrative would have changed my perceptions. Some of the flashback chapters were really interesting (I particularly liked the chapter on Alwyn Cooke and Tintamarre) but others felt like digressions for the sake of increasing page counts. And while the author does bring it all together in the end, it wasn't a reward enough. In summary, I didn't dislike this book (really!), but I wouldn't read it again. I would perhaps recommend it to someone who is more passionately interested in Caribbean history than I am.

[blueraine_91 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Night of the Rambler tells the story of the revolution in Anguilla, a small island in the Caribbean, and the subsequent calamitous failed attempt at a coup by the leaders of this revolution on a nearby island. Overall, I found this to be a very enjoyable read that explores the intricacies of a revolution in the Caribbean and the unique personalities of those involved, but also touches on universal themes of searching for freedom and self-determination. However, at times I had some trouble following the narrative and feeling invested in the characters. At many points, the narrative jumps back and forth in time, and while it eventually becomes clear and the various events are connected by the end, this does make it hard to follow at times and a bit jarring when you’re suddenly switched to new characters. However, the different timelines and historical events and background are eventually tied up in a way that does help to explain large parts of the story. I was also struck by the narrator’s voice, who, at times, speaks directly to the reader and makes sarcastic comments about the events taking place. While I liked that narrative device, I thought the character of the narrator could have been better developed to strengthen the narrative – who is the narrator, how were they involved or connected to the events taking place, why are they telling this story, etc.?I was particularly appreciative of the knowledge I gained about the history of islands in the Caribbean, many of which I had never before heard of, and gaining a better understanding of the economic, political, and social elements of those countries and their peoples. I found these aspects of the novel fascinating and always appreciate when a book can transport me to an entirely different time and place. Overall, a book I would that I would recommend to anyone interested in a historical narrative of revolution in the Caribbean.

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My thanks to LT early reviewers and to the publisher for my copy.On June 10, 1967, a thirty-five foot boat named "The Rambler" left the island of Anguilla for St. Kitts carrying 16 passengers (including three American mercenaries), a minimum of provisions, and 500 pounds of guns and ammunition. The group was going to be part of an effort to establish a coup to get rid of Robert L. Bradshaw, the premier of the new "state" of St. Kitts/Nevis/Anguilla. Only his ouster, did the Anguillans involved in the operation believe, would call international attention to Bradshaw's neglect of Anguilla and its people. The mission failed and failed badly, but oddly enough, the results of that day actually led the way toward Anguilla's independence. Night of the Rambler reimagines the events leading up to that night and what drove a mere handful of people to make such a gutsy move. While there are a couple of issues that nagged at me while reading, overall, the author tells a really good fictional story behind some real events that I never knew took place. One of the things that strikes me as some of the best work here is the author's focus on his two main characters Alwyn Cooke and Rude Thompson. While it may not be easy at first to fathom why the author seems to jump around in time and place, he's actually setting up the backstories of these characters, which reveal much about their present lives. Thompson was working in Aruba during the time of the protests against Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez and learned a great deal from a young anti-Perez-Jimenez engineer fresh from university as well as a kind of patriotism where you "step back, see things from a distance, and ask what can be done ..." He comes to realize that sometimes violence might be necessary when peaceful solutions don't work. Alwyn Cooke, who lucked out and received part of a prosperous estate as an inheritance, loves Anguilla and its people, but unlike Thompson, hopes for a nonviolent solution for the sake of the island's future. When they finally come together, Cooke and Thompson are what the author calls "two of the most important ingredients necessary for change blended into one," and as the story progresses, he clearly reveals how these two people with very different responses to their collective predicament finally realize there's much more at stake than individual personalities. Another important character, Solomon Carter, has an interesting backstory as well: he was a sugar-cane worker in the Dominican Republic who saw firsthand the attacks on Haitian and other black immigrants during Trujillo's "Parsley Massacre," and saw the blood of thousands of victims run like a river. Since then, he's sworn that he would do everything in his power to see that nothing like that could ever happen in Anguilla, taking a stance against the use of extreme violence. Another positive: the author sets the action of his story within the context of the British-speaking Caribbean of the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, when the area was a "hotbed of insurrections and revolts," and carefully sets out why the Anguillans would reach the point of aiding a coup on St. Kitts. By 1966, when the individual countries wanted internal self-governance, they first became "associated states" of the UK, and plans for the full "statehood" for St. Kitts/Nevis/Anguilla were in the works -- but the Anguillans wanted no part of it. They were neglected by their nominal leader, Bradshaw of St. Kitts, who didn't even bother to help after Hurricane Donna of 1960 decimated houses, buildings, & livestock. There was no hospital on Anguilla, no running water, no telephone service and not even a harbor. It was like these people were stuck there to fend for themselves -- you can sense the Anguillans' frustration throughout the book. What I didn't care for so much was the narrator's interjection into a story where he played no role except as omniscient observer -- sometimes the smart-alecky remarks were annoying, or once he even notes that it's "well past" his bedtime. It totally interrupts the flow and pulls the reader right out of the historical setting. However, the story is so good, and in the long run well told, so I can sort of overlook this annoyance. I would most certainly recommend Night of the Rambler, especially to people who are interested in the Caribbean islands and their histories.

[shadowofthewind · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Montague Kobbe attempts to re-imagine the world’s smallest revolution in the 1960s Caribbean, with comedic and endearing results. In 1824, the island of Anguilla was placed under British rule by way of neighboring St. Kitts. Placed in a subordinate role, those in St. Kitts viewed most Anguillans as "Bobo Johnnys" a bunch of day laborers with little intelligence. When Great Britain established an independent state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla the simmering resentment of Anguillans exploded, leading to a rebellion. Kobbe documents this factual part of the story in the beginning of his book. What happens next is a fantasy of sorts that explores the nature of revolution and the desire to be recognized as a people with dignity, no matter how small.On a June night in 1967, 13 men embark on a tiny ship, the Rambler, to capture Robert Bradshaw and force St. Kitts to declare an independent state. It's a rag tag group with leaders of the Anguillan state, revolutionary activists, and American mercenaries fresh from Vietnam. Kobbe leaves us in suspense as this group lands in St. Kitts about to execute their plan. He takes us back in time to explain how we got here. What is given a mere sentence in a Wikipedia article, Kobbe lends 250 pages; while fictional, he provides relevant facts and perspective of the Anguillan people. The back story of the Anguillan rebellion takes center stage throughout the novel. He further takes into the back story of the 13 revolutionaries providing further trajectory to this tale.Kobbe tells both the story of Anguilla as well as explaining the need for revolution, the need to be recognized and the lengths which we go to get that. Half of the story provides an in-depth background on the Anguillan people, with the other half discussing the nature of revolutions. The author makes comparisons to the Venezuelan rebellion to oust their dictator and it inspires one of the main characters to execute his plan for their own rebellion. The plan has a serious edge, but there's a scene early on that examine the two perils of a rebellion. It's a need for legitimacy that is only given by governor, and one of violence when diplomacy fails. How does a nation gain legitimacy through violent acts? Kobbe’s revolution ends not with a bang but with a whimper. The ultimate rebellion from St. Kitts takes a more Canadian route (through diplomacy and persistence) rather than an American one (violently kicking out the dictator.) Combined with a fun but cheesy denouement it ends on a comedic note to lighten the tale. Altogether an engaging story that takes an unorthodox view on 1960s revolutions and rebellions. Favorite part:A people cannot live without hope for long without erupting socially. P105

[bayleaf_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was incredible for its history, story and characters. The author crafted a fictionalized tale that could been boring or filled with dry and dusty facts, but instead was rich in people and an island that for the most part had been forgotten or ignored. At first I wasn't sure if I liked the abrupt shift from the present day to the past, but then I began to realize that it was necessary, well-placed, and basically what gave the story its depth. We readers needed this history to understand the book and its inhabitants. And speaking of inhabitants, I loved the interplay between Alwyn, Rude, and although less, Sol. All three played parts necessary to this venture.Kobbe's Anguillians loved their island, no matter how poor, desolate, and unrecognized it was. That's why I particularly liked the ending. The night of the Rambler was not a failure. It set in motion future events that would not show fruit immediately, but did affect this brave island and its people at a much later date.What a good book! I learned so much and loved its people.