The past sits uneasily on the characters of these stories, whether on their native Isabella Island or in Montreal, where some of them now live. Life is ultimately lived according to the choices that were made, and retribution does not always go where it belongs. The wealthy and proper Higginsons have lived a lie that eventually must come out. Jen and Edwin are passionately in love, but can they shake off the shadow that hangs over their lives? In his quiet and subtle way, Thomas continues to bring alive a Caribbean island, giving depth and complexity to its characters.

Born in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, H. Nigel Thomas has been living in Montreal, Canada since 1968. He is the author of three novels – Spirits in the Dark (shortlisted for the 1994 Quebec Writers’ Federation Hugh MacLennan Fiction Award), Behind the Face of Winter (to appear in French translation in autumn 2015), and Return to Arcadia; three collections of short stories – How Loud Can the Village Cock Crow, Lives: Whole and Otherwise (translated into French as Des vies cassées), and most recently, When the Bottom Falls out and Other Stories; a collection of poems, Moving through Darkness; and two scholarly texts.

H. Nigel Thomas' profile page

"Novelist, short story writer and critic H Nigel Thomas has written a fantastic collection of short stories that reveals universal truths about human nature and the human condition." --Montreal Community Contact

". . . Thomas (who was born and raised in St. Vincent) has produced a complex and specific portrait of a Caribbean nation and particularly of race within the continued effects of colonialism." --The Globe and Mail