Genre: Book
Grade: B+
Notable People: Cherie Jones
Title: “How the One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House”
Review: This is an unusual award winning first novel from this attorney turned writer form Barbados and Trinidad. Compelling story set on the fictional island of “Paradise” in the early 80s with flashbacks to the previous decade. It’s a disturbing story of domestic violence, poverty and alienation, but set in a fascinating culture with an incredible dedication to the local dialect and customs. I found the back and forth between time periods and characters for each chapter to be bit hard to follow and the story so complex as to be very slow read, but this is a powerful first novel about race and poverty, helplessness and hope and explores a culture most of us know little about.