Elizete lives on an unnamed Caribbean island and has worked the cane fields from morning to night for as long as she can remember. Given to a virtual stranger by a birth-family that could not bear another mouth to feed, she has had a life of hardship and deprivation mediated by occasional small kindnesses. Verlia, another Caribbean-born woman, fled the islands for Canada at 17 and has spent 18 years among left-wing activists hoping to foment social change. Both women share profound feelings of dislocation and disillusion, and for a brief instant?when Verlia travels to Elizete's island to participate in an incipient revolutionary effort?the two find solace in each other. While the novel follows a jagged course that delves into the tormented souls of both characters, its plot is less compelling than its poetic, dream-filled musings. Brand, a Trinidad-born filmmaker and writer living in Canada, has written a masterful, if nonlinear, expose about Caribbean poverty, cultural displacement, and human need. Both haunting and beautiful, this is recommended for most collections.?Eleanor J. Bader, New Sch. for Social Research, New York

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