Greenwichtown — Joyce Palmer

Jamaican writer Joyce Palmer is a first-time novelist who writes with raw talent and true freshness, in a voice that's uncontrived, unselfconscious, and immediate. Her narrator, Fay, sees the world with endearing simplicity and innocence, bearing her trials and mistakes with hope and honesty.

Set in Jamaica, Greenwichtown is the story of Fay Myrtle, a young, innocent, eight-year-old girl who lives in a shack outside a Jamaican plantation. An older sister takes her from the village to live in the inner-city ghettos of Greenwichtown, where she lives as her sister's daughter. There she has the chance to go to school and attend church, and her inner life thrives despite abuse by her sister and the squalor and poverty surrounding her. But as she struggles to come of age, searching for love, she gets caught up in a web of betrayal and is devastated by the death of the only man who ever loved her.