This book begins with Hector, his father, and their relatives surviving a hurricane on the island of Dominica. The descriptions and suspense drew me in immediately, but the rest was hard for me to get through. This is a heavily character driven book, but I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters. The summary says, “Hector faces down his failed marriage, shipwrecked career, and his own failures as a father…” but these issues are mostly hinted at throughout the book. They are not talked about at great length, and while Hector certainly seems to regret these actions, he doesn’t seem to take any real accountability or steps to move forward. This story sounded promising, but it missed the mark for me. Thanks to NetGalley, Red Hen Press, and Joanne Skerrett for this free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A tale about trauma, tragedy and healing. This is a story about a father losing himself and finding himself in a son he never knew he had and about a son finding himself in the father he never knew. Hector discovers his father Winston, his past and his root's amidst a storm that was in his life with his divorced wife Leandra. All this while losing the person he called both mother and father all these years.He discovers more about his father than his mother on their trip to spread her ashes in the place that she wanted.

Thanks to netgalley and red hen press for the eArc of island man!

In 2017, Hector and his father Winston travel from the US to Dominica, to scatter his mom's ashes. While they are there, hurricane Maria hits, devastating the island. As Hector and his dad stay in Dominica to help and rebuild it, more and more questions about his father, his mother and their lives in Dominica arise and need to be answered.

This book took me a while to get into, but it really picks up from the moment we step into Winston's memories of his childhood in Dominica. Slowly buy surely, the puzzle pieces about how Hector's parents met and lost sight of each other for years fall into place. This is a story about the immigration experience in the US, but also one about life in Dominica and the way that colonisation leaves it's marks on people's lives until today. Dominica's political history is woven into the stories of the characters, and I feel like I learnt a lot about the island in the last century.

A really beautiful story with a hint of star crossed lovers (and I am a sucker for star crossed lovers)

This is an island story set in the Caribbean country of Dominca. As an island girl, I'm always excited to see and read stories about characters from the West Indies. The author does a good job of interlinking the events of the past and present to create a full picture for the reader to truly understand Hector, his parents, and the things that shaped each of them. I had a good time reading this novel, and especially enjoyed the themes of forgiveness and parental relations.

I haven't read too many stories about Dominica and I learned a lot about its colonial past. This was a complicated family saga and I truly enjoyed getting to know the characters and their stories. I loved that the story looked back in the past because sometimes that's the only way to make sense of a story.

This was a solid read.

This was a good story about family, life on a Caribbean island (Dominica), and the immigration experience.

It is well written and goes into a lot of detail, which makes the characters and their situations more interesting and relatable.

I would recommend this to those interested in learning more about Caribbean life and culture.

I have given this book a 4 stars.
The cover: I loved the cover, I was confused to read the book thinking it was about the island of Jamaica but in fact it is based in America and Dominica. However I wasn't disappointed as I learnt alot from the book about things I never knew about the island.

The story: This story has a few triggers i wish I has knew about but I really enjoyed it. This story follows Hector and his parents' lives on the island. It was great incite to what peoples life is like there, and it is written without judgement and just pure facts and care.

I enjoyed going back to the past, which explained characters' behaviours, their present, and explained their personality due to their struggles.

The story made me think that this actually probably has happened to so many Caribbean people in real life and isn't spoken about enough.

The author did a amazing job on the writing, the character building and the real life facts involved in the story.

I would recommend.

What a fantastic and complex multigenerational story this was! For an under 250-page novel, this story gave so much depth. The story goes back and forth in time to after the hurricane and then back in time telling the story of Hector’s parents and family. This story is about secrets, loss, trauma, wanting, and longing. Hector has always wanted to know about his parents’ upbringing and life in Dominica, but his mom is tightlipped, and his dad gives him crumbs. Hector has a desperate longing to be connected to your family history, to your roots. Maybe now that he is home, he can find out the truth. It is true that if you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. This is a story about the past, present, and future colliding.

I enjoyed this family story. The writing was vivid and I became lost in the islands. Great lesson about family and letting the past go.

****Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review****

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an advanced copy of this book. I did not really like this read but I was really drawn in by the cover even though the cover shows more to be about Jamaica and British but that is not what was inside. I did not really enjoy the characters and that was the main focus of the book but I liked the information about the other topics like to read about some background into hurricanes and Rasta.

Winston makes his way from his from the small, tumultuous life in Dominica to Boston, only to find that his teenaged sweetheart had given birth to his own child, Hector. The novel takes us through Winston's difficult upbringing during his mother's decline, his time in the Rastafarian movement, the government's violent attack on the movement, and his journey to America where he eventually meets his son. Hector is navigating life as a successful American man with a wife and child he obviously takes for granted. I wanted to like this book, but Hector is insufferable, as is his mother Jemma. The two are self-pitying and lack any accountability for the terrible way they treat the people they claim to care about. I do appreciate Skerrett's intent, as I have never read a novel about the island of Dominica and I support BIPOC writers developing stories about the Caribbean. It was a good read, but not a great one for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Red Hen Press for permitting me to read an advance reader copy of this novel.

It's always interesting to read about a culture I don't know much about. Caribbean life is quite foreign to me, as are hurricanes, Rastafaris and immigration. Those topics kept my interest, the characters as such not so much. For me they were neither likable nor relatable.

This book was heavily character driven and pulled readers along through the plot by playing up various mysteries about the two main characters’ pasts.

For me that wasn’t enough for half the book to be about Hector’s long-lost dad, Winston.

The dual timelines worked out well, however the dual narratives was too much for the story and didn’t hold the same weight as the current timeline or Hector’s story.

Hector is not a likable character so it was difficult to invest in him and not just wish he had stayed on the island.

This book’s format was written like it’s supposed to be a memoir (thinking of the epilogue) and it’s confusing because that wasn’t my understanding of the book.