Madam Fate

Bella is a kin-owl- a shapeshifter- who knows the story of how God created Jamaica and how She laughed when She saw what She had done. Through the generations Bella lives on, in one incarnation, then another, always meeting suffering with fortitude, hiding the burden of her strange nature from others. Some of the women whose lives cross hers are young Gracie who seeks comfort for the pain of waiting for her mother who has immigrated to New York, and Mrs. Cummings, who teaches Gracie about the plants in her garden and sends her to look for the mysterious, white star flower known as Madam Fate.

Extremely lyrical and meditative, Marcia Douglas' Madam Fate is a poetic feast for the imagination."

- Edwidge Danticat

"...so flesh-and-warm human- all expressed with such a glory of Caribbean English- that what you are reading is a novel which is hugely uplifting, charged with a revolutionary spirit of language and empathy."

- The Morning Star.

"...a story which tickles the senses and delights the imagination."

- Library Journal

"...earthy, lyrical and tragic."

- Boston Sunday Globe
Madam Fate

Soho Press, New York: 1999 and Women's Press, London: 1999.



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| © Marcia Douglas - Rootsword Ooman|