Nicole Dennis-Benn

A finalist for the New York Public Library Fiction Award A Grand Prix Littéraire of the Association of Caribbean Writers Selection Named a Best Book of 2016 by: New York Times, NPR, Buzzfeed, San Francisco Chronicle, The Root, Book Riot, Kirkus, Amazon, WBUR's 'On Point' and Barnes & Noble In this radiant, highly anticipated debut, a cast of unforgettable women battle for independence while a maelstrom of change threatens their Jamaican village. Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect, Nicole Dennis-Benn pens a tender hymn to a world hidden among pristine beaches and the wide expanse of turquoise seas. At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is ruthlessly determined to shield Thandi from the same fate. When plans for a new hotel threaten the destruction of their community, each woman – fighting to balance the burdens she shoulders with the freedom she craves – must confront long-hidden scars. From a much-heralded new writer, Here Comes the Sun offers a dramatic glimpse into a vibrant, passionate world most outsiders see simply as paradise.

Here Comes the Sun

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Her hand barely moves, though other images come into focus: the chipped ceramic vase with red roses that Brother Smith keeps at the front of the room for inspiration, the Virgin Mary figurine on the windowsill, a pair of slippers with the heels rubbed down on a side table, the defiance within the straight backs of the wooden chairs. Every object has character. Substance. A story about the people who made them, owned them.

And just as she says this, three John-crows appear. They circle low, casting shadows in the face of the new sun. Their black wings are like sharp edges that seem capable of slitting trees in half. Margot feels the hair rise on the back of her neck when the John-crows descend. She watches in horror as they sink their beaks into the carcass--one that could have been a sibling, a spouse, a mother, a child. Margot will never forget this image--the sight of the crows feasting on their own, their Kumina dance celebrating death.

It was as though a veil had lifted from her eyes. When she looked down, all she saw was her black skin and how it clashed with the dress. With her surroundings. With everything. It had collided with the order and propriety of the colonial mansion that day, and the uniform line of those high-color Catholic schoolgirls. Something about that trip changed her, and on the bus ride back her home looked different: the sea-green of the nauseating sea, the sneering sun in the wide expanse of the pale sky, the indecisive Y-shaped river that once swallowed her childhood, and even the red first from the bauxite mines caked under her worn heels, seemed like a wide-open wound that bled and bled between the rural parishes

It is here, while sitting in a moonlit puddle in the penthouse suite with her fist clenched around another man, that the gigantic organism she imagines her secrets to be uncoils and pushes from her navel. She doesn’t take her hand away from Georgio, but feels, for the first time, the sadness she ought to. It floods the room and pulls her back into the night sea. She’s afraid she might drown. She remembers—too late—that Verdene had promised to teach her how to swim.

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