The White Witch of Rosehall

The legend of Annie Palmer, the plantation mistress and White Witch, is vividly recounted in this supernatural tale of nineteenth-century Jamaica.

Having come to Jamaica to learn the planting business, Robert Rutherford becomes a bookkeeper at the Rosehall sugar plantation near Montego Bay. The property is owned by the beautiful yet fearsome young widow Annie Palmer, whose three husbands have all died under curious circumstances. And very soon, Robert finds himself falling under the spell of his mistress.

Robert’s housekeeper Millicent urges him, with some success, to fall in with West Indian habits. But Mrs. Palmer won’t have another woman competing for Robert’s attention and will resort to voodoo witchcraft to get what she wants.

Originally published in 1929, this haunting tale of passion and betrayal draws readers into a dramatic, supernatural vision of colonial Jamaica in the early nineteenth century.