| Sumario: | This essay compares the ways two very different Caribbean historical novels explore different types of historical truth through their contrasting approaches to historical "facts." The first is Valerie Belgrade's Ti Marie (1988), set mostly in Trinidad during the years 1777 to 1803. Widely considered a popular romance, Ti Marie does indeed contain elements of the fairy tale that appeal to the consumer of popular fiction. Nevertheless, several critics have noted its accurate historical detail, along with its complex themes and social framework. The other historical novel under investigation is David Dabydeen's The Counting House (1996), set mostly in Guyana during the early 1860s. This novel focuses on the experiences of a couple who migrate from India to Guyana as indentured laborers. Widely considered a literary novel, The Counting House, in contrast with Ti Marie, incorporates deliberate distortions of received history. Dabydeen eschews recorded history in favor of an imaginative recreation of "the madness" of the lives of plantation laborers, about which history has little to tell us beyond the well-known facts of their exploitation. Thus these two historical novels use very different approaches to explore different types of historical truth.
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