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.

H[ubert] Nigel Thomas grew up in St Vincent and the Grenadines but moved to Montreal in 1968. He is the author of 11 books and dozens of essays. His novels Spirits in the Dark and No Safeguards were shortlisted for the Quebec Writers Federation Hugh MacLennan Fiction Prize. Des vies Cassées (the translation of Lives: Whole and Otherwise) was shortlisted for le Prix Carbet des Lycéens. He holds the 2000 Professional of the Year Jackie Robinson Award, the 2013 Université Laval’s Hommage aux créateurs, and the 2020 Black Theatre Workshop’s Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award. The Canadian High Commission to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean States deems him to be one of Canada’s outstanding immigrants from St Vincent and the Grenadines. His books Behind the Face of Winter and Lives: Whole and Otherwise have been translated into French.

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