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Vernella Fuller
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Top Mountain Press
ISBN-10: 1482396157
Type: Fiction
Pages: 330
ISBN-13: 9781482396157
Price: FREE! (eBook)
Set in rural Jamaica, Unlike Normal Women is a powerful exploration of women's capacity to affect lasting change.
Aunt Vie, dignified and the villiage matriarch. Azora, the community's wise woman and healer. And Miss Dee. A young dressmaker and business woman. Three unlikely allies, until they are confronted by an injustice each refuses to overlook
In newly independent Jamaica, Jacob Clearly is used to getting what he wants. But when he tries to coerce Miss Dee into a relationship, he underestimates the determination and the spirit of the three different women.
Set in rural Jamaica, Unlike Normal Women is a powerful exploration of women's capacity to affect lasting change for equality and justice.
Excerpt
First her daughter and husband had sent for Delores, the eldest grandchild, four years ago, then Wilbert two years after that. In her heart of hearts, as the last two years had gone with no mention by the parents of their plan to take her, Aunt Vie had thought that they would leave Babydear with her. A faint smile slipped over Vie’s lips. Everyone said that Babydear was the apple of her eye. It was true that Babydear was special to her, this youngest grandchild she knew, had been her hands and feet since the stroke a year ago.
‘Aunt Vie a bring you some fever grass tea.’ Ruthlyn Maxton, one of her neighbours, mounted the three steps of the veranda, a white enamel cup in hand, steam curling over the top.
‘Ruthlyn a told you, I don't feel like anything yet.’
‘What you mean by yet? You want to get bad stomach?’ The woman was not prepared to let her have her way as the other women had been; one by one they had each returned cold cups of tea to the kitchen. Vie reluctantly took the enamel cup with no intention of drinking from it but the younger woman, equally adamant, had no intention of moving until she had.
‘For heaven sake Ruthlyn give me some peace no!’
Ruthlyn reached out and rubbed her arm, ‘I know it must be hard.’ She sighed, ‘God knows I don’t know which of you to feel more sorry for.’ Then as if speaking to herself she launched into a diatribe about how she had almost wept with Babydear at the Watch Night Service the previous evening when one by one mournful farewell songs and recitations were rendered for her.
‘Between the old Cleary clan and England, this little District is being bled dry.’ Catching herself, the distant look in Vie’s eyes, Ruthlyn feared she had said too much, getting up hurriedly, forgetting her mission, she disappeared among the other women in the yard.
The taxis could be heard pulling up in front of her landlord’s, Ezekiel Samuel's shop. Instinctively Vie peered through the cluster of trees, past the pigsty at the end of the middle track to catch a glimpse of them, as if to check that her grandchild would be transported safely to the airport.
Babydear’s case was passed out onto the veranda. Littleman who was hovering beside Aunt Vie, hoisted the pristine case on his shoulder and set off towards the waiting cars. As eyes followed him, there began a debate in the yard as to whether it was worth sending clothes to England with Babydear. Ragu, unhindered by his lack of sight and utilising his carpenter’s precision, spoke authoritatively, that having himself had first hand experience of Europe, most of it albeit in trenches, dodging German gunfire, he believed that wearing thin cotton and seersucker dresses in the cold climate of England, was tantamount to walking about without any clothes at all. Hadn’t they heard about the winter, six years ago, 1962, when blizzard, snow and ice-cold rain had eaten off fingers and toes of those foolish enough to dig their way through pillars of ice surrounding their homes and venture the streets. Even inside, he added, paraffin heaters had all but frozen over.
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