55 pages • 1 hour read
Claribel A. OrtegaGhost Squad
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Socio-Cultural Context: Witches, Dominicans, and Multi-Ethnicity
Ghost Squad describes the adventures of two middle-school girls who ally with witches and family ghosts to fend off an army of evil spirits. Most of the characters are girls or women from various ethnic groups. The story touches, if gently, on feminism, the history of witches in America, and multiethnic communities.
Protagonist Lucely Luna is the youngest family member from the Dominican Republic, a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea where Hispanic and African people and cultures have blended together. Lucely, her father, and their ghostly relatives enjoy fried cheese, a Dominican staple. They listen to Merengue, an Afro-Euro-Taino music popular in the Dominican Republic, and they use many Spanish words in casual conversation.
Lucely can see her family’s ghosts, but others only see them as fireflies. A tradition in the Dominican Republic states that the dead who have not yet crossed over to the next world appear as fireflies, insects that emit a glowing light. (Alcequiez, Elvis. “Fireflies In The Dominican Republic And Their Mysterious Meaning.” Kiskeya Live, 2023.)
Syd Faires, Lucely’s co-protagonist, and Syd’s grandmother, Babette, are African American. The text implies that Lucely, too, can claim ancestors of African descent, along with Hispanic and, possibly, native Taino forebears in the Dominican Republic. Syd, Babette, and Lucely display an easygoing confidence that suggests pride in their ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
Babette’s no-nonsense attitude and open defiance of wicked supernatural forces reflect a deep reverence for her line of witches, the Purple Coven, which, in the story, protected St. Augustine in the 1600s until they were exiled during a murderous mob action. Many American Colonial women suffered during periodic witch hunts, and a number of them were executed as witches. Tens of thousands of European women fell to a similar fate whether or not they followed rituals considered part of witchcraft.
Many of those rites were derived from the practices of the ancient Celtic Druid priestesses of Europe, whose religion was banished when Christianity spread throughout the region during the Middle Ages. (Natalia Klimczak, “Female Druids, the Forgotten Priestesses of the Celts.” Ancient Origins, 17 May 2016.)
In the story, the Purple Coven escapes from the Spanish Inquisition, a series of trials held from the 1500s to the 1700s that led to the execution of several thousand people, mostly for alleged witchcraft. The Coven lands in the Spanish colonial town of St. Augustine, Florida. Witch hysteria follows them, and again they are forced into hiding. Babette reunites the Coven in the present day, and it supports her, Lucely, and Syd in their battle against ghostly forces of evil.
With its proudly female main characters and a harmonious blend of peoples and cultures, Ghost Squad presents a multi-ethnic story of unity, devotion, and heroic achievement.
Geographical Context: St. Augustine, Florida
St. Augustine, the oldest continuously active city in the US, is a northeast Florida town on the Atlantic coast founded in 1565 by Spanish colonists. For over 200 years, it was the capital of Florida. The city and the state were transferred to the US in 1821. In the 1960s, it was briefly an important city of the US civil rights movement. Today, it’s known for its Spanish Revival architecture, mild climate, and historic locales, which power the tourist industry there.
Among the city’s major sites are the Bridge of Lions, guarded by stone copies of the ancient Roman Medici Lions, and the old Spanish military fort, El Castillo de San Marcos, which once guarded the coast. Bridge and fort get mentions in the book, along with three famous graveyards: Huguenot Cemetery, Tolomato Cemetery, and the St. Augustine Memorial Cemetery (which, in real life, is the St. Augustine National Cemetery).
The graveyards form the settings for several nighttime scenes in the book. Tolomato was the city’s first cemetery, meant to serve the Spanish Colonials, nearly all of whom were Catholic. When Florida became a US state, the Huguenot Cemetery was established to serve the mainly Protestant settlers who arrived from other states. The National Cemetery is a resting place for US soldiers; it’s part of the national historic district encompassing downtown St. Augustine.
Two major scenes in the book take place at City Hall. Formerly the Hotel Alcazar, City Hall is a notable example of Spanish Revival architecture that boasts twin towers and symmetrical design. Among other structures of interest are the cupolas and towers of the Venetian Renaissance-style Memorial Presbyterian Church.
St. Augustine has four sister cities, all of them Hispanic. One, Santo Domingo, is the capital of the Dominican Republic, the country from which Lucely’s family emigrated.
St. Augustine can be hot and humid during summer, and it’s in a hurricane-prone region. Ghost Squad mentions warm October evenings that contrast with the sudden cold of the ghostly apparitions that attack the protagonists, and a series of supernatural storms threaten the town in the manner of hurricanes.
