The Walls of Cartagena

THE WALLS OF CARTAGENA is an historical novelette in the genre created by Sir Walter Scott. Its great world-historical backdrop is the American empire of Spain, especially its silver-producing Caribbean Basin. The dirty, hot port city of Cartagena in today's Colombia is the hub of Spain's trade in slaves imported, then bred to work silver mines and sugar plantations. In the late 1630s a Jesuit priest, Father Pedro, based on the historical Saint Peter Claver, works in Cartagena to save the souls and relieve the suffering of slaves, lepers and the dying, doing much as Mother Teresa would later do in Calcutta.

Into this world a boy child is born to a dying mother on a newly arrived Portuguese slave ship quarantined in Cartagena harbor. He is rescued by Father Pedro and another slave, and kindly raised by a rich lady who teaches him to speak, read and write four European languages. On his own this little linguistic genius, based on a real character, also learns seven African tongues. He is baptized Amadeo de Angola but is called Calepino after a more famous European genius who mastered eleven languages.

THE WALLS OF CARTAGENA is a first-person narrative by 13-year old Calepino. It is a spiritual "boy's adventure tale." Imagine Andy Hardy becoming a saint by losing his selfishness and learning to tend lepers. We touch the world of the Spanish Inquisition as it investigates the orthodoxy of a converted Jew who doctors the colony's lepers. We see a saint turn a blind eye to a little plot by Calepino to spirit an enslaved mother and son out of Cartagena to a village of runaway slaves in the interior. This he does with the help of a blind old leper, once a pirate, who then mobilizes his old chums to capture a ship belonging to the evil Spaniard on the man who had abused his slaves.

A simple tale. It lays out true history as background for the coming of age spiritually of a gifted slave boy. THE WALLS OF CARTAGENA is fast-paced, with 36 unpretentious drawings, is aimed at children from eight to twelve, but can hold an adult, too. -OOO-