Pursuit, a tale of impassioned romance written in the shadow of Romeo and Juliet, is woven into a tumultuous era when man's inhumanity to man was consumed by greed and cold-hearted indifference. It was a time that bore witness to the "Atlantic slave trade" when millions of black Africans were kidnapped or sold and then packed like sardines in the hold of a ship to be carried in chains across the "Middle Passage" to become beasts of burden.
Set in nineteenth century Guiana, a British colony in South America where sugar and coffee plantations flourished, Pursuit's backdrop is a frozen moment in time when a planter, deprived of a conscience, employed a whip and deprivation to control his human chattels. Rising from the ashes of a slave rebellion was the memory of a man who would grow in stature to become a national and international symbol of the perniciousness of human subjugation-a slave named Quamina. Thus, Pursuit, in part, is a tribute to his unsung legacy.
Frederick and Bethel had two differing complexions. He was white and free, while she was black and enslaved. Fate toyed with their lives, although it knew that they were always meant to be together. But providence can be both generous and fickle in its disposition. Would Bethel and Frederick be lovers removed from harm's way? Or, would they be Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, forbidden to be together until united by death?
BRETT STEPHAN BASS is an attorney-at-law who began his professional career specializing in corporate litigation and appellate work. Leaving an active legal practice to become a business entrepreneur, he retired at age 50 to study science, art, literature, religion, and philosophy, to travel the world with his wife, Rosalind, to hone his skills as a photographer, and to write extensively about a variety of life experiences.
He and his wife reside just outside of New York City.
