In Herschel’s Wake by Michael Wohl; Boyle & Dalton © 2022; ISBN 9781633-376274; 292 pages; publication date October 4, 2022.
SAN DIEGO – Herschel ran out on two marriages and three children. After being convicted of smuggling marijuana, he fled to Sint Eustatius where he all but disappeared to the outside world, while building a reputation on the Dutch Caribbean Island as a pharmacist and a professor. This memoir starts with a notice to his son Michael that he has died.
At first, Michael, the second of Herschel’s adult children, shrugs his shoulders. Why should he care? His father had been out of his life for a long time, even before he jumped bail. He never was really a presence in Michael’s life nor in those of Michael’s sister and half-brother, Anais and Toby. No, Herschel Joseph Wohl, known on the island as Dr. Joe, had been far more interested in his lifelong projects of writing a novel, and playing at being an astrologist and a naturalist.
Michael and his sister were not close, and he had heard of his half-brother but never had met him personally. However, something drew the threesome to the tiny island to attend to their father’s funeral, which was a do-it-yourself affair with plenty of bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Amid no end of frustrations, the children learned more about each other and also about their errant father, who over the last decade had reinvented himself on St. Eustatius.
While the memoir certainly won’t boost tourism to Sint Eustatius given its portrayal of isolation, lack of niceties, and government inefficiency, it does pay tribute to the islanders’ warmth and friendliness.
Much of the story is told in flashback, with Michael reflecting on the few occasions that he had tried unsuccessfully to bond with his father. The rest of it deals with a day-by-day account of reclaiming their father’s body from the morgue, getting a permit to bury him, needing to travel to another Caribbean country to find the right officials, and being totally flummoxed in their desire to bury him as quickly as possible in accordance with halacha.
As the author tells his story, the various short chapters are titled with the names of well-known books and movies, starting with “The Odyssey” (Homer) and “The Stranger” (Camus) and ending at Chapter 50 with “The Divine Comedy” (Dante). An epilogue is titled “Brave New World” (Huxley). Some readers may enjoy pursuing the analogies.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com