Welcome to Carabajel - remote, impenetrable, and mystical. An island protected by reefs and drenched in fog, its secrets long buried deep within the tropical mist….

My inspiration for the fictional island of Carabajel came from my memories of trips to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands when I was a little girl. My father had business there so we would go quite often. Back then, in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Caribbean was difficult to reach by air so the trips were always exotic. Tortola was a world away from cold and dismal New England winters. We would fly first to San Juan, PR then board old World War II-era DC-3’s to reach the island – the same plane Piper flies from San Jose, Costa Rica. It was terrifying and exhilarating and wonderful all the same.

Carabajel’s airport with the round fountain is Tortola’s old Beef Island Airport. It was just an airstrip with a tiny terminal when i would visit, but the round fountain was there, and I would look for it every time we landed.

The Universidad de Villegas and its salt-water pool was based on the old Prospect Reef Resort on the outskirts of Road Town, where we would often stay when it was in its heyday, a luxury resort for mariners getting ready for bareboat charters or returning from sailing in Sir Francis Drake Channel to Virgin Gorda and beyond.

The architecture of the convent is based loosely on the College of Mount Saint Vincent on the banks of the Hudson River in New York, where I once considered studying.  

The walled Carabajel City is from my imagination, though it was influenced by my love of the great northern city of Quebec, even though of course it never snows on Carabajel.

The dark, triangular mountains Piper first sees in the essay contest poster are from the Pitons of Saint Lucia.

And the name “Carabajel” is my tribute to C.S. Lewis’s palace, Cair Paravel, in Narnia, the author who first made me consider someday writing about worlds beyond my own.