Nationally celebrated novelist, Nicole Dennis-Benn is back with a gripping new novel! This time it is the tumultuous tale of Patsy (PATSY, Liveright Hardcover $26.95, 432pp, ISBN: 978-1-63149-563-2); a Jamaican woman who has finally received her long-held dream of a visa to America. She intends to use this visa as an opportunity to escape the poverty that surrounds her in a Kingston ghetto and reunite with her oldest friend-turned-lover Cicely; who left the island years before under a shroud of mystery. However, this escape plan does not include Patsy’s five year old daughter, Tru.
“She squeezes her daughter in a tight embrace, wishing she could be satisfied with the simple pleasure of feeling the sun on her eyelids and the embrace of her daughter. But as she inhales the smell of Blue Magic hair oil she uses in Tru’s hair, which mingles with the smell of beef patties and exhaust fumes from the traffic, and as she listens to the sounds of rush hour on Half-Way Tree Road clamoring around them, Patsy only feels her secret yearning for more deepening. (pp.32-33)
