Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Sen­a­tor He­len Dray­ton's first fic­tion­al nov­el, The Crys­tal Bird, is a must-read ac­cord­ing to the re­views from sev­er­al read­ers of the nov­el. This is her third book. She has pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten two books of po­ems ti­tled Brown Doves Pas­sages I and II.

At the book launch held re­cent­ly at Queen's Hall, St Ann's, Dray­ton re­ceived ac­co­lades from pro­fes­sor Dr Sel­wyn Ryan, African en­thu­si­ast and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Lennox Bernard, his col­league, Corinne Bap­tiste-Mck­night and oth­ers, for what they de­scribed as an ex­hil­a­rat­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al piece of lit­er­a­ture that serves to teach and un­cov­er the mys­tery and life of some of the ear­li­est civil­i­sa­tions that ex­ist­ed in east and north Africa.

The Crys­tal Bird en­com­pass­es mys­tery, ro­mance, mag­ic and the jour­ney to self-dis­cov­ery. In his syn­op­sis of the book, Ryan said each chap­ter does such a fan­tas­tic job at en­thralling its read­er that one of­ten for­gets it is fic­tion and not fact. He even sug­gest­ed a tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion of the nov­el should be con­sid­ered.

Ryan, who lived in east Africa for sev­er­al years teach­ing po­lit­i­cal sci­ence, said the book is mag­nif­i­cent not on­ly be­cause it is ex­treme­ly well writ­ten but be­cause most of the writ­ing is po­et­ic, so there is no speed read­ing; one has to read for both con­tent and lan­guage.

"The book is re­al­ly what I would call a clash of civil­i­sa­tions. It is re­al­ly a con­tex­ting of two dif­fer­ent ways of life, two dif­fer­ent ways of see­ing the world and as­sess­ing val­ues," he said.

"It is not a book of pro­pa­gan­da. But there are se­ri­ous moral prob­lems ad­dressed in the vol­ume. It seems to teach and gen­tly in­struct read­ers of all ages, on how the world could in fact be, if we would just give it a chance. It dis­cuss­es new pat­terns of sov­er­eign­ty, new val­ue sys­tems and a new re­spect for an­cient prin­ci­ples of liv­ing. Most of all, it high­lights that civil­i­sa­tion did not start yes­ter­day or in the west."

Bernard agreed with Ryan that an tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion should be done; adding, it is bril­liant­ly writ­ten and quite ex­cit­ing to read.

Quot­ing pas­sages from var­i­ous chap­ters, he said: "Dray­ton...con­tin­ues to work us­ing her own method­ol­o­gy and link­ing to­geth­er his­tor­i­cal themes through her aes­thet­ic the­o­ry. She pro­vides what the his­to­ri­an likes to call 'his­tor­i­cal sketch­ing'."

He says this is pro­found in chap­ter ten where she en­gages a dis­cus­sion of ear­ly man and their de­vel­op­ment to civil­i­sa­tion. He said in the same chap­ter, and per­haps through­out the book, read­ers will of­ten find bib­li­cal ref­er­ences through­out, as Dray­ton faces con­flict be­tween what is a Judeo Chris­t­ian eth­ic and the way of the new world.

Bernard al­so high­light­ed the love sto­ry be­tween two of the book's char­ac­ters–Al­lan and Jiena, say­ing the pas­sage pro­vides strong lyri­cal con­tent and en­gag­ing lan­guage, as the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two, il­lus­trates agape love.

The Sen­a­tor said Dray­ton did a won­der­ful job of bridg­ing the gap–con­nect­ing the past to the present. He feels it is a great way to teach young peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly about their his­to­ry. Oth­er com­ments came from cre­ative di­rec­tor Si­mone Jacelon who sug­gest­ed the book should be in­clud­ed on the sec­ondary schools' cur­ricu­lum for lit­er­a­ture.

Bap­tiste-McK­night, said The Crys­tal Bird strikes a chord and clev­er­ly ad­dress­es all the chal­lenges we face in life. She said it en­com­pass­es every­thing man needs to know when it comes to the search of self-dis­cov­ery.

"All I can say is buy the book...read the book, and share it with some­one you val­ue and some­one who val­ues you," con­clud­ed Bap­tiste-McK­night.

In her clos­ing re­marks, Dray­ton thanked every­one present who helped dur­ing the writ­ing of this nov­el. A mod­est Dray­ton said: "I have heard such great things about my lit­er­a­ture, but I think it was very sim­ple, just a deep sto­ry that came from my love of an­cient his­to­ry and my love for the en­vi­ron­ment."

She said she was hap­py to know that all the re­views that came in were quite sim­i­lar, and that tells her that the depths, ro­mance and psy­chol­o­gy in the book were clear­ly un­der­stood.

Dray­ton said in writ­ing the book, it took her in­to deep re­search of an­cient his­to­ry, specif­i­cal­ly of east and north Africa, ar­chae­ol­o­gy and she al­so found her­self vis­it­ing and re­vis­it­ing scrip­tures in the Bible, as she re­searched the foot­prints of mankind.

She thanked Niger­ian High Com­mis­sion­er, John Jen, who was present, for al­low­ing her to use the li­brary at the em­bassy for re­search.

Dray­ton said writ­ing the book was both a spir­i­tu­al and emo­tion­al jour­ney for her. She said if there were any mes­sages in the book, they were to teach peo­ple that his­to­ry is im­por­tant in the lives of mankind, not to dwell on, but to have a sense of self. An­oth­er mes­sage would be: this earth is filled with nat­ur­al trea­sure and we are ob­lig­at­ed to pre­serve and pro­tect it for if we de­stroy the en­vi­ron­ment, we de­stroy our­selves. And a third mes­sage would con­vey, no man is an is­land, on­ly through con­nect­ing with each oth­er can we ful­ly be­come in­de­pen­dent.

Oth­ers in at­ten­dance were Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Em­manuel George, Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh and Sen­a­tor Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, among oth­ers.

Crys­tal Bird is avail­able at Ish­mael M Khan, Met­ro­pol­i­tan book­stores and on­line at Ama­zon.com.

All pro­ceeds from book sales at the launch were do­nat­ed to Unit­ed Way.