She's Gone
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“[A] diaspora of black culture and strong emotions, bordering the fine line between love and madness between two troubled people.” —Booklist
A prominent Jamaican reggae singer falls in love with an African-American woman while on tour in South Carolina. The two struggle to forge a relationship across a cultural and psychological divide in a story that spans from Jamaica to South Carolina to New York City.
“This striking debut novel is from the heart about the heart. The characters are true, the landscapes exquisite, and the relationships dynamic, insightful, and complex. Read it and be transported.” —Bernardine Evaristo, author of Mr. Loverman
“She’s Gone offers intriguing geographic descriptions of South Carolina and Jamaica and interesting moments when Dawes allows Jamaicans their say about Americans.” —PopMatters
“She’s Gone delves into the psychology of desire and need as it contends with issues of culture and class. If it is a love story, it is one marked by the harsh realities of human existence that we see in the most revealing of Bob Marley’s love songs, or the cool sensual intelligence of the best of Milan Kundera. Dawes is a poet but he never let’s his poetry detract from the sheer pleasure of storytelling.” —Jamaicans.com
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his debut novel, Jamaican writer Dawes unites Kofi, singer and lyricist of the Jamaican Reggae band Small Ax, and the equally last-nameless Columbia University sex researcher Keisha on the dance floor of a beachfront Carolina club, but can't make them connect fully, with each other or as characters. With sparks flying (and over the protestations of the ambitious bass player Pedro), the two decamp to Spanish Town in the Greater Antilles, where Keisha takes a job in a private high school and Kofi, inspired by rubbish scavengers, composes social lamentations. When word comes that Kofi's Aunt Josephine is on her deathbed, the two rush to the Jamaican backwater of Castlevale to find the old lady holding off the inevitable until she has had a chance to fill Keisha in on her nephew's complicated genealogy. Kofi grieves by purging himself with bags of oranges, and Keisha, feeling spurned, travels deeper in-country, and ends up dissuading a would-be rapist by means of projectile vomiting. She returns to Spanish Town to bid Kofi farewell, but secondhand tidings of a pregnancy lure him into stalking her across the Caribbean. Dawes then maps out Keisha's South Carolina backstory, but all of the attributes of these two characters-from Kofi's Ghanian roots to Keisha's tardily-recovered molestation memories and abuse at the hands of former beau Troy-don't gel.
