In this collection, the uncertain paths of childhood and adulthood are traced through a sequence of poems that treat Idlewild—a place deep in the heart of rural Jamaica—as a character, a constant that serves as a reliable touchstone for memory. Although the majority of the poems are centered on themes of security and pleasant memory, the edges are haunted with truths of rupture in family relations, abandonment, loneliness, resentment of unreliable men, and the challenges of maintaining faith through difficult times. Balancing nostalgia for the past with an acute awareness of the present—the poverty, violence, class divides, and racial complexities of modern day Jamaica—the central voice of the poem matures along with the subject matter to gradually unveil a well-formed poetic voice with an authoritative command of form and language.
