BookLife Review: Welcome to Glorious Tuga (Francesca Segal, author) by Carol O’Day

Contemporary fiction, tropical island, visiting veterinarian tortoise researcher, physician returning home, colorful island residents, conservation, ecology, secrets, romance

In Welcome to Glorious Tuga, we meet Charlotte Walker, an academic veterinarian who studies tortoises. She is the daughter of a powerful British single mother, Lucinda. Based on a pair of the most slender of clues, Charlotte suspects her unnamed father may hail from a faraway former British territory, the Island of Tuga, located in the South Pacific Ocean. Charlotte applies for and is awarded a fellowship to study the rare gold coin tortoises found almost exclusively on Tuga. Access to the island is only by ship and only during a limited portion of the year when ocean travel is not threatened by voracious hurricanes.

On the ship from London to Tuga, Charlotte meets Dr. Dan Sekri, a native of Tuga who has spent decades away from Tuga in English schools including medical school. Zekri’s education was funded by the citizens of Tuga with the expectation that he would return to the island to take over its medical care from its aging resident doctor. Charlotte and Dan meet and connect; he cares for her during her extended bout of sea-sickness. The two arrive at port in Tuga to exuberant heroes’ welcomes. Charlotte and Dan part reluctantly, with attachment brewing. Charlotte is escorted to a local cottage and Dan to his mother’s home.

Both Dan and Charlotte encounter obstacles in launching their planned work on the island. Islanders love their returning son, but are reluctant to transfer their medical care from the long-serving Dr. Saul to the new kid on the block. Charlotte’s plan is to track gold coin tortoises, measure their population and what roles they may have in the local ecosystem. But succumbs to the locals’ nearly ceaseless requests that she attend their ailing livestock and pets. To win their favor she assents.

No novel worth its salt lacks complications, particularly where budding romance is concerned. Here, the reader learns that Dr. Dan has a fiance scheduled to arrive on Tuga within months. Charlotte is drawn to a sexy local bachelor who returns her interest. She swears off of Dr. Dan when she learns of his fiance and when new information concerning her paternity complicates the picture further.

Welcome to Glorious Tuga is heartwarming and funny, and full of quirky and colorful local islanders who form a tight-knit community imbued with loyalty, staunch traditions, and good measure of unfounded superstition. It is a place that compels centuries of visitors to make it their home, despite its heat, humidity, storms, bugs and inaccessibility. It is a step back in time and a place where the interconnectedness of neighbors is not only a way of life but a necessity of living. Take the trip to glorious Tuga, plunge into the lives of these delightful islanders and be transported and dazzled. Even the open ending that begs more questions than it answers will satisfy, and perhaps leave you clamoring for a return trip.

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