Great Gorme
By: by Colleen Cairns.
Publisher: Weybright and Talley
Published: 1975
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 252
First sentence: A man from the 'Starlight' had helped her with her bags. Pan Am had deposited Ceil punctually enough in Barbados but both the tiny Avros operating to the Out Islands had been -- temporarily? -- out of commission, awaiting parts from what was confidently called the UK.
Description: Bookjacket:  "Despite some strange and frightening experiences during her school days, Ceil Ellison, a young American, had a college girl's skepticism about the psychic and the occult. But a trip to the green Caribbean island of Connaught to become tutor and companion to young Christian de Ribardi began her own unsought education in unseen, and increasingly threatening ways. 

"Friendly and not so friendly islanders feigned ignorance of her remote destinatin:  the Great House of Gorme. Even her arrival at the height of a mountain storm was met with mystery as the immense wooden door was inexplicably shut in her face. But as she came to discover, one by one, the secrets of the giant mansion, Ceil discovered that the ultimate mystery lay in the enigmatic person of its owner, Rene de Ribardi -- Master of Gorme."
Notes: This first novel is a mixture of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (note the parallels between Jane and Rochester's first encounter and the first meeting between Rene and Ceil) and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (creepy castle, resentful housekeeper, dead first wife who is not all she seems). There are also original elements, including nutmeg culture, Caribbean occult practices, and labyrinthitis.