ABOUT
THE BOOK

For a young widow on the island of Corpus Christi, Britain’s alliance with the United States during W.W II means the arrival of U.S. servicemen in the colonies, and as borders in her house. She quickly learns that the soldiers’ appetites go beyond the dinner table to the island’s more tempting and provocative fruits. Each evening at supper, as a ploy to keep her young men out of the brothels and out of the chief of police’s greedy hands, she feeds them tales that seductively blend the Caribbean’s exotic past with a decidedly spicy present. Now in her ninety-sixth year, the widow tells these stories to her innocent young grandson as a tapestry of interlocking and exaggerated memories, all the more colourful for the retelling. Lyrical and lewd, fabulous and scatological, they are tales that tumble out and continually interrupt each other as a series of stories within stories within stories, including guest appearances from historical interlopers ranging from Sir Walter Raleigh to Eisenhower. Told in her richly uninhibited vernacular, the stories range from absurd, side-splitting asides to timeless traditional Caribbean folktales – each with her unique twist. What she generously and playfully offers her grandson is a rite of passage, lessons in an ancient art.