National Network for Equitable Library Service

An artist cooks a Jamaican meal for her straying lover, thinking she might just have the one ingredient that will ensure he never leaves her. A beautiful woman slips into the sea near her Jamaican home and disappears on the eve of a reunion with her Scottish fianc. A white law student and a black harlot do a sexual tango in a shanty with fatal results. Like a tropical breeze, the whiff of exotica blows through the lives of Bernadette Dyer’s characters, whether they are Jamaican immigrants grappling with everyday existence in Canada or residents of Jamaica itself encountering the uncommon and the fabulous under the torrid Caribbean sun. Ghosts haunt crumbling estates, lovers despair amid crashing waves and wind- whipped vistas, dislocated newcomers seek better lives in faraway lands. Magic may be found anywhere, and the wistful and the winsome walk side by side through concrete-and-steel canyons of the inner city or along cliffs where they may topple into a raging surf or collide with an epiphany of boundless possibility.