In 1937, on the Dominican side of the Haitian border, Amabelle, an orphaned maid to an army colonel's wife, falls in love with Sebastien, an itinerant sugarcane cutter, but their relationship is threatened by the violent persecution of the Haitians.
At once personal and political, this novel about being black and male in white America depicts an unyielding core of individual resistance and demonstrates with tragic immediacy how America's mixed signals foster false hopes. Reprint.