This engaging coming-of-age novel looks back over the idyllic Jamaican girlhood and the both alienating and transforming experience of winning a scholarship to the most prestigious girls' boarding school on the island. Atypical of Caribbean literature because of its description of a young girl's sexual awakening, the novel offers poetic descriptions of rural and urban Jamaica and delightful characterizations of warm and lively women, including the narrator's mother, grandmother, and neighbors.