Notes from a Writer's Book of Cures & Spells

Notes from a Writer’s Book of Cures and Spells is an inspiring and poetic novel about hope, healing, and the underside of paradise—set in Kingston, Jamaica, where author Marcia Douglas grew up and where the story unfolds on what she calls "the edge of the world." The seed for the book came from childhood recollections: squatters in a cemetery, clotheslines stretched above tombstones, and a young girl singing amid the dead.

Flamingo, a young writer in Jamaica, finds herself enmeshed in the world of her fictional characters: Dahlia, a young girl growing up in West Kingston; her beautiful, one-eyed sister Alva, who dreams of fashion design in New York; their brother Paul, nicknamed “Made in China” for his love of coconut cakes in Mrs. Ying’s shop; and a Rastafarian Madonna who sits on a windowsill, stealing keys, bottle caps, and hairpins as people pass by. When poverty, emigration, and political turmoil cause the siblings to scatter, Alva turns to Flamingo to help bring them back together.

The novel, modeled after a writer’s personal notebook, is sprinkled with recipes, herbal remedies, dream interpretations, and various interjections evoking the culture and traditions of Jamaica. Flamingo can’t help but fill the margins with her own drawings. The pages are embellished with clippings, notes, photographs, and an appendix of found material—including soul dolls made from seeds, pods, moss, and twigs, each one representing a character in the story.

In this unique literary creation, storytelling is a metaphor for healing, and the ability to tell a story is itself an act of magic.