A story of deception, brokenness, forgiveness, and redemption.
As a little girl, Sydnee Price’s mother left her "for a little while," in the care of a couple in Jamaica. Molested by her guardian, reviled by the women in the district and disowned by the church, Sydnee flees to America, buries her past and seals her heart tight.
However, the ghosts of her past hover, including Sunshine Brown, the daughter conceived in abuse and abandoned. To reclaim her “true” self and silence the ghosts, Sydnee returns to Jamaica, admits her deepest shame, faces the child she abandoned, but is not prepared for what unfolds.
Written with keen insight, When God Wasn't Looking is the story of Sydnee Price, broken as a child, but who rose to success then eventually found redemption and healed her past.
Professional Reviews
When God Wasn't Looking
Eunice Heath Tate creates a splendid narrative voice that pulls you into the lives of her characters, allowing us to experience the migrations both physical and emotional that sometimes have to be undertaken as we navigate Diasporas of the mind and body. The beauty of the Caribbean landscape contrasts with the pain sometimes which human actors perpetrate and render women in recovery years later, camouflaging pain with intense professionalism, or escaping to safer ground, to an elsewhere that provides comfort and opportunity. The writer does not shy away from the difficult questions, the violations that are sometimes perpetrated by those with power to know better, a community that sometimes looks the other way even as it witnesses difficulty. The here and there of diaspora is part of Sydnee’s world until she returns to recover what was lost, to uncover the wounds and let herself heal. And the grappling with the meaning of faith and belief in personal redemption provides the catharsis that allows the women of Fresh Springs to create new beginnings.
Carole Boyce Davies, author of Caribbean Spaces (Illinois, 2013) is Professor of Africana Studies and English, Cornell University
I have written a chapter called I Am That, I Am in this inspirational compilation book by best-selling authors and wonderful people from all walks of life xox :-D (Its sister book is called Adventures In Manifesting - Success and Spirituality)
