Jamie’s Muse

The lost history of Bonnie Lee Black’s Scottish great-grandmother, Helen, has haunted the author for years. Why, as young newlyweds, did Helen and William Black leave their hometown, Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland, and immigrate to the “dark continent” of Africa in 1882? Black’s deep spiritual connection to her ancestor has inspired her to weave a tale that is part fantasy and part history. Helen and Will died just three years after settling in Natal, South Africa, just months after the birth of their first child, Black’s grandfather, John. There is no record of their demise; no record of how their baby son ended up in an orphanage in Edinburgh, nor of how the 14-year-old boy stowed away on a ship to New York. Black lived in Africa for many years herself and writes with a sure sense of place and ­history, interwoven with the fantasy of Helen, her short life, and her imagined close friendship with Kirriemuir’s most famous son, J.M. Barrie, author of “Peter Pan.”