Throughout her life my mother, Doris, lived in two places at once: Kingston, Jamaica, where she raised a family of nine children, and Harvey River, in the parish of Hanover, where she was born and grew up.

When Doris Harveys English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his familys home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the fabulous Harvey girls, and where the rich local bounty of Lucea yams, pimentos, and mangoes went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties of her parents house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to hard life Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters.

In Lorna Goodisons spellbinding memoir of he