Marie-Reine de Jaham, daughter of a Béké (descendant of French settlers), was born in Martinique. After growing up in Saint-Pierre, she married at 17 and followed her husband to the United States, where she took up an advertising career, first in New York, then in Paris where she founded the cultural association Patrimoine Créole. Author of numerous books, literature and non-fiction, she published the sequel to her first novel The great Béké published in 1989 under the title The heiress of the great Béké.
« My name is Garance de la Joucquerie and I am the great-granddaughter of a legendary woman who was nicknamed the great Béké. Almost a century has passed since she gave me this poignant challenge: “Someone will have to take over from me, I would like it to be you”.
Martinique was then just a colony bending under white domination.
Year after year, I saw her change, stand up to the old masters and little by little oust them. I saw it weather the swell of global upheavals, and finally, face the immense shift of decolonization.
To save her domain, the great Béké went so far as to disinherit her legitimate children, making her bastard the master of the plantation. She had organized everything, planned everything. All ? No. No one could have predicted what happened. » (Presentation of Caribbean editions)
