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From the winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize comes a mesmerising, powerful, inspiring and beautifully controlled story of a mother's loss of her son to the world of gang crime, and her memories of life in the Caribbean. At the news of what has happened to her son BJ, Idora Morrison collapses in her basement apartment. For four days and nights she retreats into a vortex of memory, pain, and disappointment that becomes a riveting expose of her life as a black immigrant from the Caribbean. While she struggled to make ends meet for twenty-five years, her deadbeat husband abandoned her for a better life in New York. Left alone to raise her son, Idora has done her best to survive against immense odds. But now that BJ has disappeared into a life of crime, she recoils from his loss and tries to understand how her life has spiralled into this tragic place.

Reviews

"[Clarke] can be expected to bring the reader into the mind of the protagonist, and he doesn't disappoint with his new novel. . . . This affecting novel will shatter American misconceptions about Canadian race relations. A good option for serious readers."--Library Journal
"A beautifully written exploration of cultural conflicts and one woman's struggle to find a place for herself emotionally."--Booklist
"Clarke stays true to his politically charged style . . . An introspective examination of the cultural racism and the life of minorities, [a] detailed . . . narrative."--Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Culminating with the international success of The Polished Hoe, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize, Austin Clarkes work since 1964 includes ten novels, six short-story collections, and three memoirs.In 1998 Austin Clarke was invested with the Order of Canada, and since then he has received four honorary doctorates. In 1999 he was the winner of the W.O. Mitchell Prize, awarded to a Canadian writer who has produced an outstanding body of work and served as mentor for other writers. In that year he also received the Martin Luther King Junior Award for Excellence in Writing. Austin Clarke lives in Toronto, Canada.