Sarah Edgehill receives a scholarship to attend college in the U.S. She spends weeks deciding whether to go. Her grandmother is firmly against it, believing the U.S. a godless, violent, and lonely place. She'd rather Sara stay in her native Trinidad. Sara shares her grandmother's fears, but in the end, a memory from childhood makes the decision for her.
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When Sara was a child, she contracted polio. She was weak and miserable; she wanted to die. Her mother and grandmother prayed to Our Lady of Fatima daily; begging the saint to restore Sara's health. Their prayers were answered. One bright afternoon, a young American doctor knocked on their door. They received him into Sara's room, where he administered a polio vaccine. A few weeks later, Sara resumed her play down by the well, pondering the magic of the vaccine that brought her back from the brink of certain death. Sara wants to visit the country from which that doctor came.
Sara immigrates to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. She's one of three Caribbean women in her class. They're the first people of color to attend the school. The year is 1963, and the U.S. administration is performing small-scale integration experiments in a handful of elite schools across the country. Sarah meets her roommate Courtney. Courtney decorates her half of the room with statuettes and images of St. Lucian Vodun deities. Over the course of the first semester, Sara and Courtney become friends. The discuss their experiences back home, the anti-colonial and integration movements, religion, faith, romantic interests, and childhood memories.
However, their friendship is uneasy. Sarah is uncomfortable with Courtney's religious piety. The Vodun gods Courtney worships seems strange and backwards to her. Sara's mother, a devout Christian, had always warned Sarah against worshipping the indigenous Trinidadian gods. Sara's grandmother, too, advised her against the ways of indigenous worshippers.
Sarah makes disparaging remarks to Courtney and threatens to destroy her religious icons. Courtney senses that Sara's reaction is really a reflection of the shame she feels about her own Trinidadian culture and heritage. She tells Sara she should accept her native heritage; and admonishes her to stop being afraid and ashamed of her history. Their conflict remains unresolved and their friendship is weakened. The two talk with one another less frequently. They withdraw from one another but maintain a cordial politeness.
Sara meets Sam: an African-American activist from Milwaukee. He doesn't know much about the Caribbean independence struggles. Sara feels betrayed by his lack of knowledge; it's as though Sam doesn't care about any struggle other than that of African-Americans. For months, the two engage in heated discussions between bouts of lovemaking. When spring rolls around, Sam decides to ride down to Mississippi to help register Black people to vote. Sara believes it's too dangerous and urges him to reconsider. He sticks with his decision. The two part with the nature of their relationship ambiguous; they each harbor a degree of resentment for the other, yet their romantic attachment remains strong.
Sara feels abandoned at Sam's departure. She learns she is pregnant. She leans into Courtney for advise and support.Courtney encourages her to do whatever she feels is best. Sara aborts her pregnancy. She hears word that Sam has been beaten arrested down south.
Sara struggles to keep up with her schoolwork. She looses touch with Sam and with family back home. She is haunted by the ghost of her aborted child in agonizing, guilt-ridden nightmares. During the day, visual memories of her childhood appear before her; memories of the days before British colonialism, when she and her grandmother would go up to the hills and worship some of the very same gods represented by Courtney's statuettes and alters. Sara experiences a near psychologically disturbing crisis of identity: she's unable to distinguish reality from her dreamlike visions and hallucinations.
Courtney provides Sara much-needed stability and counsel. She encourages Sara to reconnect to her family and her culture. Sara begins looking at Courtney differently. She notices (as though for the first time) Courtney's secure manner, the confidence of her smile and the quiet, resilient quality of her steadfast faith. Sara gains a new respect for for Courtney. With Courtney's help, Sara reaches out to and reconnects to her family and to her now estranged boyfriend Sam. Sara starts studying the religious traditions of the Caribbean. She slowly begins to recover and resolve her identity issues. She and Courtney talk about the possibility of joining Sam down in Mississippi. Somehow it feels important to Sara that the three of them -- Same, Courtney, and herself -- participate in something bigger than themselves, together.
Best part of story, including ending:
The characters are a bit one dimensional. With the exception of the main character Sara, everyone seems to have figured it out. The characters are deeply entrenched in their ideological and religious convictions. At times, it can be difficult to access their human side; their complexity and battles within. The characters are doing too much work: they're functioning ideologically, and that limits them unfairly. Sara does show up with the kind of rawness and complexity that makes for a good literary character, but the narrative seems to suggest that the final resolution to her story will be in securing some kind of political or religious perspective. I'd rather hope that Sara (and the other characters that inhabit this world) could show what it means to live in a world of uncertainty; where things aren't so clear and there aren't any answers. The fact that we never see that kind of complexity or tension makes this an entertaining, but ultimately uninspiring read.
Opinion about the main character:
Sara Edgehill is caught at a crossroads concerning her cultural, religious, and ideological identity. She's deeply conflicted about all these things, and we empathize with her struggle to establish a locus of identity for herself. Still, she lacks depth. Her actual personality and inner-subjective world is rather flat; dominated as it is by messages and ideals. Sara is presented to us as a dichotomy: either she will accept her native heritage, or she will reject it and opt for some form of cultural and religious assimilation instead. The fact that Sara is presented to us in this way is somewhat alienating: there's just not enough existential marrow to make Sara feel real.
