Publisher's Synopsis
This novel is about war in the twentieth century, at the end of a long millennium of war. May we demand, and build, a better peace. This novel is about the conflict between black people and white people in America and the Caribbean, four centuries after the first Dutch vessel emptied its cargo of African slaves onto a beach in Virginia. This novel is about four war victims: a midwife who has been emotionally battered, a soldier who has been emotionally bludgeoned, a petrochemical engineer who seeks ways not to exist, and a Polish refugee from Hitler's war whose twig-thin fingers carve voluptuous sculptures in West Indian mahogany. This novel, like it or not, is about us.
