Near The Hope - Brossura

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jennifer Davis Carey has roots both in the Caribbean and the American South. She has published opinion pieces in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and a short story in the journal Caribbean Writer. She honed the craft of writing at workshops including Algonkian Writers, Sewanee Writer's Workshop, and Hurston-Wright Foundation Writing Workshop. She also participated in a residency with Voices of our Nation (VONA) and completed coursework at Grub Street in Boston. The author holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University. Near the Hope is her first novel.

Near the Hope tells the story of a young woman, Ruth Adele, called Dellie, and her emigration to Brooklyn in pursuit of a life freed from the strictures of class, sugar cane, and colony that set the parameters of life on the tiny Caribbean island that she loves. Barbados is emptying out. Young men are leaving to dig the Panama Canal or to work on one of the merchant vessels servicing His Majesty's Empire. Women are departing to find their way in the United States. Sugar plantations are breaking up as the market for cane crashes de-stabilizing the economy and daily life. Yet despite these changes the Great Houses of the sugar estates still rule every aspect of life. Brooklyn is filling up with a mosaic of people struggling to make their way. As Dellie works to craft a life she encounters a new set of choices, yet many of the same challenges now presented with a New York accent. Her tale reflects that of thousands of women who set foot on these shores-either running from or heading toward something. Or like her, doing a bit of both. Near the Hope blends historical fact, folk practice and beliefs with a vivid sense of place and time. It moves from the exotic and lush world of Barbados at the turn of the twentieth century to the hazy glow of New York in the gaslight era to probe questions of home, family, and what we choose to hold on to or to let go.