“Often wickedly funny, always profoundly Trini, 
Barbara Jenkins’ debut novel assures her ‘rightest place’ among the vital new chorus of women who are redefining the English-infused Caribbean.” Robert Antoni

Indira Gabriel, recently abandoned by her lover, Solomon, embarks on a project to reinvigorate a dilapidated bar into something special. In this warm, funny, sexy, and bittersweet novel, Barbara Jenkins draws together a richly-drawn cast of characters, like a Trinidadian Cheers.

Meet Bostic, Solomon’s boyhood friend, who is determined to keep the bar as a shrine; I Cynthia, the tale-telling Belmont maco ; KarlLee, the painter with a very complicated love-life; fatherless Jah-Son; and Fritzie, single mum and Indira’s loyal right-hand woman. At the book’s centre is the unforgettable Indira, with her ebullience and sadness, her sharpness and honesty, obsession with the daily horoscope and addiction to increasingly absurd self-help books.

In this warm, funny, sexy, and bittersweet novel, Barbara Jenkins hears, like Sam Selvon, the melancholy behind “the kiff-kiff laughter”, as darkness from Indira’s past threatens her drive to make a new beginning.