Selena's ex-husband has left her in a strange land with a baby and two younger sisters to care for. It's hard for Spanish-speaking immigrants to get work, and Selena earns little from the crochet dolls and doilies she makes to sell. The middle sister, Celia, works in a hotel at a job she hates, but it pays the rent and puts food on the table. Pamela is still at school. The three came from the Dominican Republic in the hope of a better living in Antigua. But Antiguans are hostile to the immigrant community in their midst, seeing the newcomers as intruders come to steal away their jobs and their men folk. Only Pamela settles easily into the new life.

Antiguan and Barbudan Joanne C. Hillhouse is the author of Oh Gad! (Strebor/Atria/Simon & Schuster), The Boy from Willow Bend (Macmillan/Hansib), and Fish Outta Water (Pearson). Her fiction also appears in the anthologies So the Nailhead Bend, So the Story End: An Anthology of Antiguan and Barbudan Writing (A Different Publisher), In the Black: New African Canadian Literature (Insomniac Press) and For Women: In Tribute to Nina Simone (Black Classic Press/MZWrightNow Publications). Hillhouse's awards include a Breadloaf fellowship, the David Hough Literary Prize, and a UNESCO Honour Award for contribution to literacy and the literary arts in Antigua and Barbuda. She's founder and co-ordinator of the Wadadli Youth Pen Prize - promoting the literary arts among young people in Antigua and Barbuda. She works as a freelance writer and editor.

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