Synopses & Reviews
First it's her mother's missing gold brooch. Then, a blue and white dish she hasn't seen in years. Followed by an entire grove of cashew trees.
When objects begin appearing out of nowhere, Calamity knows that the special gift she has not felt since childhood has returned-her ability to find lost things. Calamity, a woman as contrary as the tides around her Caribbean island home, is confronting two of life's biggest dramas. First is the death of her father, who raised her alone until a pregnant Calamity rejected him when she was sixteen years old. The second drama: she's starting menopause. Now when she has a hot flash and feels a tingling in her hands, she knows it's a lost object calling to her.
Then she finds something unexpected: a four-year-old boy washes up on the shore, his dreadlocked hair matted with shells. Calamity decides to take the orphaned child into her care, which brings unexpected upheaval into her life and further strains her relationship with her adult daughter. Fostering this child will force her to confront all the memories of her own childhood-and the disappearance of her mother so many years before.
Review
"[A] historical narrative from slave-trading days lays the foundation for the contemporary story. A winningly told tale filled with regional color." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Hopkinson's novel doesn't resolve every mystery. But Hopkinson has answered the essential questions...and she's wise enough to know we need nothing more." Seattle Times
Synopsis
Fifty-something, Caribbean-born "Calamity" is faced with two major life transitions--the death of her beloved father and the onset of menopause--the second of which has rekindled her gift for finding lost things, a talent that comes in handy when she discovers a lost four-year-old boy with a most unusual family. By the author of The Salt Roads.
Synopsis
The acclaimed author of The Salt Roads and Skin Folk pens a breakthrough, mainstream novel about the wrath of love and family relationships.
Synopsis
In the bestselling tradition of Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, and Alice Walker comes the breakthrough work by award-winning author Nalo Hopkinson about the unexpected discovery of a mysterious orphaned child and the disruption it causes in the life of a Caribbean woman. First it's her mother's missing gold brooch. Then, a blue and white dish she hasn't seen in years. Followed by an entire grove of cashew trees.
When objects begin appearing out of nowhere, Calamity knows that the special gift she has not felt since childhood has returned-her ability to find lost things. Calamity, a woman as contrary as the tides around her Caribbean island home, is confronting two of life's biggest dramas. First is the death of her father, who raised her alone until a pregnant Calamity rejected him when she was sixteen years old. The second drama: she's starting menopause. Now when she has a hot flash and feels a tingling in her hands, she knows it's a lost object calling to her.
Then she finds something unexpected: a four-year-old boy washes up on the shore, his dreadlocked hair matted with shells. Calamity decides to take the orphaned child into her care, which brings unexpected upheaval into her life and further strains her relationship with her adult daughter. Fostering this child will force her to confront all the memories of her own childhood-and the disappearance of her mother so many years before.
Synopsis
"A mainstream magical realism novel set in the Caribbean on the fictional island of Dolorosse. It tells the story of a 50-something grandmother whose mother disappeared when she was a teenager and whose father has just passed away as she begins menopause. With this physical change of life comes a return of a special power for finding lost things, something she hasn't been able to do since childhood"--Provided by publisher.Fifty-something, Caribbean-born "Calamity" is faced with two major life transitions--the death of her beloved father and the onset of menopause--the second of which has rekindled her gift for finding lost things.
About the Author
Nalo Hopkinson's novel Brown Girl in the Ring won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. She has taken second place in the Short Prose Competition of the Writers Union of Canada, and is the recipient of the Ontario Arts Council Foundation Award for Emerging Writers, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and the Locus Award for a first novel.