The principle of karma has it that morally good actions will ultimately produce morally good outcomes, and that morally bad actions will produce the reverse. Whether an action is good or bad comes down to the intention behind it; so, in general, accidents and mistakes should not be judged on a moral level.
The teenaged heroine of Jonnie Comet’s Deirdre, the Voyager: Karma (Surf City Source Media Group) has heretofore been a very good sort of girl, trying her best to live in a world which often demands that she abandon her principles of honour, decency and human kindness. Now, for the first time, she is facing not the amourous attentions of a few pushy young men but several very real dangers to her very life, and, worse, to the lives of those she has come to love more than herself.
Over most of Voyager, Deirdre sails warm waters, basks in the sun and forges close friendships with shipmates amidst the life-or-death realities of voyaging at sea: nothing she has never done before. But unavoidable circumstances will try the effervescent teenager in a bikini with the danger of unpredictable violence and the likelihood of murder; and in her absolute determination to survive we discover a much darker Deirdre than ever before, cunningly ingenious and stunningly effective at what no 15-year-old girl should have to know how to do.
‘Do not think of him again,’ she says to comfort little Mandi after they are threatened with molestation by a lecherous terrorist. ‘He is a monster.… I will kill him before I ever let him touch you again.’ Deirdre may well believe her actions and intentions morally justified, even as she complains that others’ are not: ‘…all the struggles in this part of the world are nothing more than squabbles between two kinds of people who do not accept the concept of “forgive and forget’’.’
Her time in mystical India with the loving Prasad family is almost mundane by comparison, reminiscent of her happy days in England, staying in a happy household of loving friends and pleasantly occupied with productive responsibilities. But she cannot escape the past; and forces beyond her control compel her to forsake what she most loves to flee what she most fears.
Joining the complement of an Australian container ship, she embarks on the most productive and satisfying voyage so far, the close community of the ship under the leadership and high expectations of the demanding but kindly Captain Stewart providing the best combination of responsibility, safety, family and sense of home Deirdre has known so far. She will observe joyfully several major milestones in her young life and will experience the excitement and ecstasy that comes from discerning a distinct course for her future… till the point-of-no-return Deirdre has long dreaded, which comes at the least likely and most heartbreaking opportunity.
Nearly a year into her independence, Deirdre has come a long way, and not just geographically. This is no longer the optimistic, naïve little girl of Wanderer, nor the spiteful manipulator of Oyster’s Pearl. With experience has come a marked degree of maturity, and with it a mandatory acceptance of just how her actions affect herself and others, both in this world and the next. Even so, Sister Elaine’s assessment of her on the train is probably more accurate that Deirdre knows: for even an avenging angel deserves forgiveness.
The volume’s title is telling; for Voyager begins and ends with ambiguity, both logistically and morally, like a journey with no beginning or end. Author Jonnie Comet leaves a reader anxious for an outcome that will not yet arrive, leading into the next instalment in which some questions may be answered. As the ever the indefatigable narrator, maybe one of the most loveable literary heroines ever, has won a place in our hearts with her winsome wit and and all-too-human humility.
Deirdre, the Voyager: Karma is now available through Amazon.com.
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Surf City Source Media Group. Original text ©Jonnie Comet Productions; used by permission.
