A new collection of stories of the Jamaican diaspora by acclaimed poet and storyteller Pamela Mordecai. Deftly weaving darkness into light and the past into the present, Mordecai creates a world powered by unforgettable characters and a language that sings.

Moredecai's stories are alive with sound, driven by dazzling yet subtle reimaginings of lore, ancestry, and history. A young man, new to the city gets in trouble at school for being restless and disruptive. A stone-throwing duppy smashes an elderly couple's car window as they drive past a graveyard, and an 80-year-old woman goes to great lengths to get the sugar needed to bake a cake for a soon-to-be-arriving visitor.

As Celeste Mohammed writes, "The thirteen stories in this volume set in places as far afield as Mayaro village in Trinidad and the subway stations of Toronto carry with them all the heirlooms that Caribbean people carry when they leave home. Mordecai's great gift is to make this combination feel not like the past haunting the present, but like the fullness of Caribbean crossroads identity: comic, tender, at times frightening, yet undeniably relevant."