Even the “real” parts of this fantasy are fictional. There is no island in the Bahamas named Lucaya; the Lucayans were the earliest inhabitants of the archipelago, now extinct. No character in my story is based on a living person, and the events are my invention.
All the same, events like the attempt to develop “Long Pond Cay” do happen. The Bahamians and their government have to guard their beautiful islands “jealously and zealously,” in the words of the current Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Hubert Ingraham. And so should we all guard the environment of our whole world: the earth and air and water whose quality is constantly under threat.
Anyone who is intrigued by the Gaia hypothesis should read the two books written by its remarkable originator, James E. Lovelock: Gaia and The Ages of Gaia. Also relevant to the story are William Anderson’s book The Green Man and David Campbell’s wonderful natural history of the Bahamas, The Ephemeral Islands.