The Promised Land

The Promised Land speaks to the great human drama of the marginalized and dispossessed quests for material well-being, empowerment, enfranchisement, and self-determination.
—Jako Books

A biopsy of the disease of underdevelopment in a Caribbean town…For anyone who genuinely cares about the future betterment of life for the people of Vieux Fort, The Promised Land offers an uncompromising analysis and plenty of good advice!
—Dr. Jolien Harmsen

The Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates…a land flowing with milk and honey.
—Genesis 15:18-19; Exodus 3:17.

Vieux Fort, a Caribbean town at the southernmost tip of St. Lucia and furthest point from the capital and largest city, is blessed with unparalleled infrastructure and favorable natural attributes, yet it continues to lag behind the northern part of the island and never seems able to realize its full potential.

According to the publisher, Jako Books, The Promised Land, the first of The Vieux Fort Chronicles book series by Dr. Anderson Reynolds, tells us why. For it shows how government neglect, misadventure, and exploitation, along with poor governance and political representation, have kept Vieux Fort backward and prevented it from living up to its promise.

However, Dr. Reynolds doesn’t stop there. He advises on who must govern (“run”) Vieux Fort and how best to govern (“run”) the town to pull it out of its socioeconomic morass and set it on the path of progress.

Vieux Fort is the main focus of the book, but its relevance goes far beyond the district. Its prescriptions on how, for best results, district representatives must look after their constituency are applicable not just to Vieux Fort and other St. Lucian district representatives but to parliamentary representatives throughout the world.

Jako Books revealed that “contrary to economic textbooks and as intimated in Why Nations Fail, The Promised Land demonstrates that underdevelopment has less to do with size, resources, and technology, and more to do with neglect, mismanagement, government misadventure, and political and economic extraction.”

The publisher further revealed that “while Sir Arthur Lewis gave us the dual-sector model of economic development, Dr. Reynolds has gifted us a recipe for the socio-economic upliftment of provincial regions. But, above all, The Promised Land speaks to the great human drama of the marginalized and dispossessed quests for material well-being, empowerment, enfranchisement, and self-determination.’’

Dr. Jolien Harmsen, author of Sugar, Slavery and Settlement: A social history of Vieux Fort St Lucia, from the Amerindians to the present, as well as the principal author of A History of St. Lucia, arguably the first attempt at a comprehensive history of St. Lucia, seems to concur with Jako Books’ intimations of The Promised Land. Following are her views on the newly published political missive.

The Promised Land is a biopsy of the disease of underdevelopment in a Caribbean town. It traces the deep historical roots of the disease to centuries of landlessness and people’s powerlessness in the face of overwhelming external influences: from slavery and the plantation economy to the American military base and, nowadays, Invest Saint Lucia’s unquestioned preoccupation with foreign investors at the expense, it is claimed, of local entrepreneurs.

Having set the historical landscape, A Promised Land then dissects how subsequent post-war governments have failed to engender an organic, indigenous community response. Instead, this town—Vieux Fort—continues to linger, despondently.

Who Runs Vieux Fort, Dr. Reynolds asks? Too many random captains on a ship that seems to flounder quite rudderless is the answer. Dr. Reynolds is intimately familiar with the nitty-gritty of local politics and doesn’t hesitate to wash the town’s dirty linen in public. The book, no doubt, will cause some red ears and raise a good few hackles. But Anderson Reynolds is no political hack. The result is that, likely, neither red nor yellow will thank him for his efforts. But for anyone who genuinely cares about the future betterment of life for the people of Vieux Fort, The Promised Land offers an uncompromising analysis, and plenty of good advice!

For his part, Dr. Reynolds intimated that given Vieux Fort’s depressing socioeconomic quagmire, leading the nation in homicide and unemployment rates, and with Dr. Kenny Anthony, Vieux Fort’s district rep for the past three decades about to bow out of politics, and with the next general elections merely months away, The Promised Land is coming at a critical juncture in the history of St. Lucia and thus its publication is both timely and auspicious and may well impact the outcome of the general elections.

Besides The Promised Land, Jako Books recently published a second book by Dr. Reynolds, Magna: A Memoir of the Enduring Human Spirit, which focuses on the life and death of his mother. With these two books, Dr. Reynolds is now the author of eight books, making him one of St. Lucia’s most prolific and significant writers, and some would say its foremost public intellectual and authority on its socioeconomic history.

Both books are now available on Amazon and will be available in St. Lucia by the end of May. Upon arrival of the books in St. Lucia, Dr. Reynolds promises to visit the island’s secondary schools and conduct book signings and readings throughout the country, and hopefully, as well as in Barbados, New York, Atlanta, and possibly other North American cities.

Reviews of MAGNA: A Memoir of the Enduring Human Spirit

MAGNA—A Memoir of the Enduring Human Spirit—Dr. Reynolds’ Finest (by Modeste Downes)
Booklife Selects MAGNA as its Editor’s Pick
Readers’ Favorite Gives MAGNA 5-Star Reviews (by Readers’ Favorite Reviewers)