Running away from Canada, Mariana hopes to forget a failed marriage and the death of her husband by embarking on a whole new life. She moves lock, stock, and two cats to the small Caribbean island of Bequia. But the move brings more than she could have imagined. New friends ask her to help solve a recent murder in the expat community. And then there’s the problem of her neighbours, a young woman and her children. Seemingly abandoned by family and friends, Mariana believes they need her help! By becoming involved, Mariana is carried along from wanting to simply “live with the locals” to being overwhelmed by their culture, one so vastly different to what she had left behind in Canada that she doesn’t know who among her expat friends she can turn to for advice. So she carries on regardless and discovers that Bequia isn’t exactly the tropical paradise it had promised to be.

One Woman’s Island is the second novel in the Bequia Perspectives series that picks up again a few months in time after the first novel, Island in the Clouds.

Susan M. Toy's profile page

One Woman's Island beautifully captures the spirit of being on the island of Bequia. The author’s ear for local dialogue is faultless. Besides its lush and exotic setting, however, the book accurately and with pathos reflects the end of an unsatisfactory marriage for main character Mariana who is constantly searching for something meaningful to take its place. She takes a young girl Verity and her two children under her wing, and hears about her folly in no uncertain terms from one of the die-hard ex-pats who lives there. With its complex characters, fast-moving plot, authentic setting and the underlying seriousness of the questions it so skillfully raises, One Woman’s Island, is a book that should garner a wide readership, one far larger than those who are familiar with Bequia.

Felicity Harley, author of The Burning Years