Summary

In “Indigo Bay,” the novel begins with a panoramic aerial descent into Saint X, a remote tourist-friendly island in the Caribbean. The perspective comes to focus on Indigo Bay itself, with its posh resort and spa, its pristine family-friendly beach, and its carefully trained staff ready to cultivate the tourist dollars. It is 1995, the week between Christmas and New Year’s, the busiest week for the resorts on the island. The focus then rests on a single young teenaged girl, Alison Thomas, a first semester freshman at Princeton, there at the resort with her family for the holidays, strolling among the tourists, heads turning to take in the girl’s casually provocative walk. “She wears a long, billowy tunic over her bikini, but she has a teenage knack for carrying it with a whiff of provocation” (7). It is late morning and she joins...