Sapphire Sea by John B. Robinson

From the Publisher

Teeming with perilous, exotic locales and widespread examples of social injustice, this bold adventure follows one man's plight to seek his fortune while commenting on the widespread social and economic effects of the African gem trade. Plagued by a bitter divorce and an overbearing father, gem-expert Lonny Cushman flees to the lawless sapphire fields of Madagascar. Homesick and lonely, he dreams of the perfect stone that will fuel an independent career as a gem dealer back in New York and allow him to see his seven-year-old daughter. Finally unearthing the greatest sapphire discovered in the last hundred years, he finds that the power brokers of Diego Suarez want the stone for themselves, and now Lonny must call on all his ingenuity and cunning to escape with his life. Richly detailed and riddled with seedy complexities, this thrilling narrative offers readers a rare glimpse into the culture, the people, and the underbelly of Madagascar.

The Washington Post

The strength of the novel is its vivid portrait of a failed nation … as travel writing, The Sapphire Sea is first-rate. — Patrick Anderson

Publishers Weekly

In his crackling debut, Robinson ignites the senses in a mad charge through the underbelly of sweltering, perilous Madagascar. Jewel dealer Lonny Cushman is working out of Diego-Suarez, "a Casablanca without a Bogart," buying low-quality sapphires for his father in bulk. On a drive through the King's Reserve, he sees a flash of blue "a glimpse of the divine" so brilliant that he crashes his motorcycle. A peasant is holding a giant sapphire up to the light. At its heart, there is a six-pointed star; it is the biggest, most perfect gem ever discovered. The peasant wants 66 zebu the oxen that represent spiritual wealth to the Malagasy and Lonny agrees. Now all he has to do is smuggle the jewel out of the country. Standing in the way are murderous army officers, crooked police and a despotic ruler called "The First Rooster" not to mention Malika, a beautiful, seductive African-American CIA agent. Aid from his jeweler-dealer father not forthcoming, Lonny makes his way across the island, telling lies and dodging bullets, and finally makes it to sea. His adventures aren't quite over, though he still has to sell the stone and, if he wants to see his daughter and estranged wife again, make it stateside. Robinson, who himself has traded in gemstones in Madagascar, crafts a briskly paced and gripping read, full of rich details about corundum stones, African geography and Lonny's maturation from Page Six playboy to would-be doting father. Readers may be dissuaded from visiting the island, but this breathless experience is fun all the way. (Nov. 1) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Rich in exotic local color and gem lore, Robinson's debut is an action-packed tale that recalls H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines. An American gem dealer, Lonny Cushman leaves behind his comfortable New York City existence for life as an expatriate in Madagascar, where he discovers the world's largest sapphire. Unfortunately for him, a lot of people want the jewel, and the bulk of the novel involves Lonny's adventures evading his ex-wife's lawyers, his autocratic father, and the CIA. In addition, he must deal with a military commander who believes that the sapphire is national property; the First Rooster (a.k.a. the King), who claims it as a tribal relic; the Anglican bishop, who interprets the discovery as a divine sign; and the French ambassador, who seeks ownership of the jewel as a way of maintaining his country's waning influence. This does not take into account the various brigands, powerbrokers, and murderous native tribes also interested in the sapphire. It is hard to believe that much of this book is autobiographical (Robinson once traded gems in Madagascar). Recommended for popular fiction collections.-Fred Gervat, formerly with Concordia Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A giant gemstone drives men mad. This first from Robinson, a globetrotter and former gem dealer, has all the makings of an old-style Ripping Yarn-but the amateurish prose clunk-clunk-clunks.

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It was 6:45 A.M. when the sun's blazing rays of amber light finally blasted over the horizon. Lonny cruised down a stretch of open macadam flanked by lizard green hills and fetid rice paddies. He was past the mining camps and inside the King's Reserve. He had the throttle wrenched back, the clutch lever squeezed tight and was in the act of kicking the Japanese road pony into third. And it was just a flash. A hallucinogenic glint of phosphorescence in a crosshatched sea of chartreuse yellow, ocher red and black ash.

The motorcycle coasted at a high-pitched whine as Lonny's eye processed the color, and a magical sensation welled up inside his chest like a balloon. He told himself to push on but the curse and the salvation of Lonny's life was his eye. Lonny had a seeing eye. An eye that could weigh, cut and mount a gemstone by holding it to the sun. The eye of an artist. An eye that could see into things and take their measure.

As he whipped around in the saddle to locate the blue glimmer, the motorcycle veered into freshly tilled soil and his body catapulted forward like a human cannonball. He plowed into the sponge-like paddy helmet-first. Mud jammed up around the visor and left him with a intimate view of a tropical millipede. After two years in Madagascar there were still some mornings he found the place surreal.

It was the fourth time he had taken a digger, each time in a paddy, and each time it had required a team of zebu to pull the machine free of the sticky muck. But this time he was not overly concerned about himself, his predicament or the danger of getting caught inside the King's Reserve. He could feel his body temperature rise and his eye twitch as he thought about an improbable twinkle that promised a glimpse of the divine.

He pushed himself off the fallow ground and glanced around. In the near distance he spotted a middle-aged peasant sitting away from the deserted highway beneath a towering mango tree. A small figure who watched Lonny's ridiculous accident without understanding and without trying to understand. The peasant was lifting a blue stone up to the sun, as he had seen the traders do in the sapphire camps, trying to see what he could sense.

Lonny wiped the mud from his visor and surveyed the damage. The front tines of the motorcycle were twisted, the wheel rim bent, the engine covered with soil. With luck he might be able to ride it back to Diego-Suarez. He removed his mirrored helmet and walked woodenly toward the gigantic mango tree. His body was drenched in a heavy layer of sweat before he was halfway there.

"M'boulets tsara," greeted Lonny in the local dialect. Once a week he submitted to Antakarana lessons from Bishop McKenzie, an aged Scottish missionary who had not spoken English for months at a go before Lonny parachuted into town. "M'boulets tsara," returned Jaoravo, the Happy Bull, a descendant of Jao, the Bull. Unlike the landless miners from the highlands and the south, Jaoravo's ancestors had cultivated this territory for a dozen generations. It was a part of his feet, his hands, his stomach. Everything he harvested he owed to the ancestors' good grace.

"J'achete des saphirs," said Lonny, switching to French. As a boy his French mother had impressed upon him that "the beautiful language" was the language of love. At New York University he had majored in French because it was supposed to be the language of literature and art. Yet in northern Madagascar all his years of St. Exupéry, Sartre and Duras served a commercial end.

Jaoravo listened to Lonny and heard nothing malevolent.

"Vous avez un saphir?" continued Lonny, hoping he would not have to try the whole thing in dialect.

At the time of independence Jaoravo had finished his schooling and he was proud of his ability to speak French. The young men in the nearby village called him the Frenchman because they liked to tease him. He did not mind the teasing. He was proud of his ability to communicate with strangers. His own father spoke French and Jaoravo did not feel ashamed before the ancestors.

Lonny's legs were limber, as he had only been riding a short time, but he lost balance when Jaoravo rotated his palm and extended his arm to reveal a luminous sapphire the size of a swan's egg.

"C'est un vrai saphir," said Jaoravo. A real one. And he knew it was. For although he knew nothing about sapphires in particular, he sensed the force of the stone, and from what he had heard, all the good stones were sapphires. The stone had a presence not unlike the sacred tree where he offered white-faced male ducks to the departed. He had discovered the blue stone in his rice paddy as he turned the soil with a squared spade. He had been carrying it for months, but now he felt himself unaccountably sad and he wanted to make a tribute to the ancestors. He wanted to sacrifice a zebu in their honor and he thought that if he took the disturbing blue stone to town surely one of the strangers would give him a zebu for it.

Lonny picked the wondrous sapphire from Jaoravo's work-beaten palm and held it against the washed turquoise sky. The stone was the color of a delphinium on the summer side of a mountain, as clear as a bell's chime. He closed his eyes briefly in delight and behind his eyelids he saw the magnificent sapphire float melodiously like a musical note. The gem did not filter the passage of light ...