2023 Best Novel Award! - Jamaican Cultural Development Commission
Fiery passion glows from between the covers of this couple's memoir. With nearly unshakable adherence to their love and inner truths, they strive to flow in rhythm with the uplifting "One Love" Jamaican vibrations, as they face alarming impediments, cross-cultural confrontations, prejudices, and politics.
At the core is a love story radiating from a life-changing encounter of two souls. Despite being from different parts of the world, they instantly bond, as they are meant to be together. Then the troubles begin.
Mountainous obstacles keep sabotaging their union. Even the visa process is stopped dead by a U.S. government shutdown-not once but twice! Dire predictions from skeptical friends and daunting health challenges intervene. Is the universe warning them or just testing their resolve?
Alex, a young father in rural Jamaica, is struggling to raise two small sons out of poverty. Once, in the depths of despair, he has a vision that gives him hope. Dare he believe that a woman from a'foreign will rescue them?
Lainee is an accomplished professional in Philadelphia, enjoying her businesses, travels, and friends. Much earlier, after a confusing divorce, she is fascinated by the idea that she is to host a Jamaican bed and breakfast in retirement. She nurtures the idea for 15 years, even while she wonders if it is just a wistful dream. Why not yearn for a life with warm weather and soothing sea waters?
These dual dreams seem to drift randomly in the ether. Suddenly, they mysteriously attract and converge, bringing the two souls face to face. Is fate facilitating love or manipulating false hope? It is up to them to decide.
Against the odds, they risk their familiar lives, commit to each other, and remain faithful to their True Selves, as they are challenged by a frightening illness, alarming injuries, financial shocks, distrust, racism, betrayal, and even intimidating threats. These mountainous obstacles are reimagined as stepping stones, but not without sporadic soul-searching; they are human, after all.
Ultimately, their reward is an enriching, peaceful immersion in One Love, a Rastafari "overstanding" of living in harmony with Jah's life force.
Inspired by the 1990's movie and book, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, an unlikely romance sparked by an island rendezvous, this author feels like Stella's sister-in-spirit, as she reveals intriguing details of an inspirational journey that she, her husband, and sons have navigated for 25 years and are still going strong. It reads like a fantasy but is as radiantly real as life gets.
