Uncertain Kin

For readers of Frying Plaintain and Scarborough, a luminous, mesmerizing collection of linked stories about the lives of woman and girls in the Bahamas, from Janice Lynn Mather.

Set against the vivid backdrop of the Bahamas, these eighteen beautiful, poignant, absorbing stories center the experiences of women and girls as they search for identity and belonging during moments of unsettling upheaval. The women of Uncertain Kin are bold and big-hearted, complex and intimately familiar. They grapple with the bonds of kinship and the responsibilities of parenthood, with grief, longing, betrayal, coming of age, and what it, means to be a woman.

In "Morning Swim," a jogger, newly diagnosed with cancer, makes a sinister discovery on the beach. In "Mango Summer," little girls begin disappearing from their beds during one lush, steaming August. Two teenaged sisters sneak out to go dancing and encounter more than they bargained for in "We Left Late." Nassau wakes up to blood-red water pouring from its taps after a pastor decries witchcraft, in "Drinking Water." In "Boyo," a woman new to Vancouver struggles to plant roots in a city that doesn't seem to want her or her family.

These stories are at once deeply grounded, startlingly perceptive, and tinged with folkloric and surreal elements, and all speak to the beauty and brutality of being alive.