The Man Who Turned Both Cheeks
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Jamaica is the picturesque background for this explosive novel about love, fear, and intolerance, the second in Gillian Royes’s mystery series featuring charming and charismatic bartender-turned-detective Shad.
With the arrival of Joseph, estranged son of Eric, the bar’s owner, hopes for the village’s future come alive but are soon to be threatened. Janna, who has returned to the island, falls for Joseph’s good looks and charm, but she isn’t the only one with an eye for this mysterious man.
As questions about Joseph’s sexuality arise, Shad struggles with protecting the survival of his beloved birthplace amid the deeply ingrained culture of intolerance that surrounds him. What it means to be a man and a father raises questions within Shad’s own home, as his longtime love, Beth, pressures him to make a commitment.
In a land where religion is strong, but life is cheap and violence is often the answer, what will it take for Shad to protect Eric and his family? In this truth-telling sequel to The Goat Woman of Largo Bay, the village must confront its own darkness or lose a bright future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Royes's strong sequel to her fiction debut, 2011's The Goat Woman of Largo Bay, deepens the character of Shad Myers, bartender by trade, investigator by vocation, and unofficial sheriff of the small Jamaican village of Largo Bay. Shad's employer, Eric Keller, plans to build a new hotel and wants Shad to be a partner. Eric's grown son, Joseph, is coming to Jamaica from the U.S. to write the business proposal, but Joseph's reputation as a "batty boy" (e.g., a homosexual) from a visit 11 years earlier is still vivid. Shad attempts to halt the rumors, because in Jamaica to be gay is "to court death." A cast of fully realized characters provide a colorful spectrum of relationships, while an undercurrent of suspicion and hostility threatens to derail the hotel that would mean so much to the village. Shad's idea of a hero ("he don't pull people down he lifts them up") is demonstrated in many ways, small and large, in this sensitive, thought-provoking novel.
