Phaedra and Dionne arrive in Barbados from Brooklyn just as summer begins. They have come to stay with their grandmother Hyacinth in Bird Hill, while their mother Avril stays in the States to recover from the debilitating depression that has consumed her and her daughters’ lives. Phaedra and Dionne have known Barbados as “home” in name only.

Now, they’re left to navigate for themselves the tangled maze of their family’s—and especially their mother’s—roots in Bird Hill.

Author Naomi Jackson has written characters that are achingly genuine, and whose lives are well worth getting to know.