This is a story of the Tomlinson family’s journey in Kingston, Jamaica, between the 1950s and 1970s. The Tomlinson family’s dream becomes reality when they move from the inner city to a middle-class neighbourhood in East Kingston. But their dream-life is short lived. Arthur, the patriarch and an alcoholic, in a drunken fury one night, orders his wife Rose to “Leave mi house, now!” Rose, a work-from-home dressmaker, leaves everything behind, and with her four children (Marcy still a toddler), flee to her mother, Mari, ‘Granny’. The six of them shares Granny’s one-room quarters for months.
Rose finds work, and they move from one tenement yard to another, settling on a rented house for all of them. By this time, Arthur’s life spirals as he becomes more dependent on white rum. He loses his job as a fireman, then the family home, and takes refuge in a room upstairs his favourite bar. Rose continues to seek a better life. On an invitation letter, she goes to Toronto, Canada. She remains there after attaining work as a live-in domestic, leaving the children with their grandmother. Granny’s love, however, is not enough to restrain the teenagers. Marcy, the youngest, has a boyfriend who is taking her down a path of drugs and staying out late. Five years after Rose leaves Jamaica, she gains her Canadian citizenship. Will Rose ever return to save her children from a life of waywardness? Or is the Tomlinson family destined to a doomed life?
(Sample Chapter 1)
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