Napier is a writer whose prose sings, whose characters, black and white, live and breathe, and whose main character, Teresa, is engagingly feisty and witty.

But there is much more, for the novel has not only a painterly and ecological vision of the land, but also an acute awareness of different kinds of Caribbeans, between what Sylvia Wynter much later described as the dichotomy of plot (the area of Caribbean space that its people have made their own) and plantation (the zone of industrial exploitation of land and labour). 

Elma Napier's novel, first published in 1938, and reissued here for the first time, is a revelation. Hers is writing that is intensely alive, sensuous in its rich portrayal of the islands fauna and flora, and in the creation of characters who truly breathe.

Elma Napier was born in Scotland in 1892, settled with her family in Dominica in 1932 and became a leading literary and political personality on the island.