Brilliant debut collection of stories written by an author of formidable talent who has already won the Rhys Davies Prize and the Stand International Short Story Competition, and has been broadcast on BBC radio. The twelve stories range widely over time, character, age, and background. The narrators of two of them salvage their black stories from the predominantly white telling of history: an eighteenth century grocer lies on his death bed and reflects on slavery and servanthood; and in the nineteenth century a woman contemplates how her dark skin creates double-edged relationships with white men. The writing is full of light and life, the descriptions marked by an unusual exactness.