Softcover 192 Pages $14.00

"A Drama of the Caribbean is a well-written, informative treatment of a series of historical events with tragic repercussions in France and for the Jesuit order worldwide. Instructive theological excursions are expertly woven into the plot through skillful ...conversation. The concluding scene of the expulsion of the Paris Jesuits and the exoneration of Fr. Antoine (Lavalette) is powerful and handled without sensationalism.

"I recommend this historical novel. It casts considerable light on the 'Martinique scandal' that resulted to a great extent in the papal suppression of the Jesuit order worldwide. Its sympathetic treatment of a committed, spirited Jesuit accurately reflect the complex religious context of the period. Withal, the story moves with suspense. A knowledgeable reader may notice contemporary political parallels with Central America, especially El Salvador."

— Rev. Joseph Eagan, S.J., Associate Professor, University of San Francisco

"In Antoine Lavalette William Brennan has rescued from near oblivion the memory of a crisis that battered the French Catholic Church in the 1740s. No where else in English is this story so fully told. It is an account of a Jesuit sponsored venture in the sugar trade gone bankrupt after a series of business reverses. This failure led to the suppression of Jesuits in France and eventually to the universal suppression of the Society of Jesus by Pope Clement XIV in 1773.

"Father Brennan, himself a veteran missioner who worked for 19 years in British Honduras, tells this story with a novelist's gift for pace, vivid detail and dialogue. ...this book is more than historical fiction. Its events and their disastrous consequences were real. For this reason A Drama of the Caribbean is a book that today's readers will find not only engrossing but also timely and instructive."

— John W. Donohue, S.J., America Magazine

With beautiful woodcut illustrations by Celine Farrell. This one shows Fr. Antoine hard at work in the sugar cane fields of Martinique.