Sweetness in the Skin

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Description

A coming-of-age celebration of food, family and finding your voice, for fans of The Girl with the Louding Voice Fourteen-year-old Pumkin Patterson lives in a two-room house in Kingston Jamaica with her devoted grandmother, her beloved Aunt Sophie, and a mother who could not care less about her. When her conniving estranged father shows up Pumkin's only real escape is baking - while making sweet potato pudding and apple turnovers she can forget the fighting at home. When Aunt Sophie is offered the chance to move to France, she promises to send for Pumkin as soon as she can afford to. But when things take a turn for the worse in Pumkin's household, she's determined to raise the money herself. Her mother is determined to make her stay, but will her friends, neighbours and talent for baking be her escape

Reviews

Delightful. This tender, humorous, coming-of-age tale celebrates the flavours and language of Jamaica -- Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake
Vibrant, affecting and joyfully uplifting. I felt completely transported, and was cheering Pumkin along every step of the way! -- Lucy Diamond, author of Anything Could Happen
Sweetness in the Skin is a tender exploration of familial love, both the family youre born to, and the one you find along the way. Robinson has written a treatise on the effects of colourism and class divisions that is heartbreaking and raw, yet joyful. This vivid story transported me to Pumkins world through an excursion of the senses, the sights, the sounds, and especially the tastes of Jamaica, taking me back to the one journey I took to my fatherland and leaving me yearning to return. -- Charlene Carr, author of Hold My Girl

Author Bio

Ishi Robinson is a Jamaican writer living in Berlin. Her first ever publication was a short story in the national newspaper when she was eleven years old. Since then, she's written opinion pieces and short stories of fiction for various publications in Kingston, Toronto, Rome and Berlin. Sweetness in the Skin is her first novel.