Title: Madam Fate
First published: 1999
Description: Bella is a Kin-owl - a shapeshifter - who was there when God created Jamaica and laughed when She saw what She had done. Through the generations Bella lives on, in one incarnation, then another, always meeting suffering with fortitude, hiding the burden of her strange nature from others.

Some of the women whose lives cross hers are Ida, now an inmate of the Garden (once a British fortress, now the asylum for troubled old women); Claudia, an educated woman, who comes to the Garden hoping to find the mother who abandoned her as an infant; and Muriel, who ventures to New York City in search of a better life, as well as Andrea, the friend from Jamaica she makes there.

Young Gracie seeks comfort for the pain of being left behind by her mother, Muriel. And then there is Mrs. Cummings, who teaches Gracie about the plants in her garden and sends her to look for the white star flower that grows on the bush known as Madam Fate.
Subjects: Emigration and immigration, Fiction, Slavery, Women, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, general, Jamaica, fiction, Civilization
Places: Jamaica
LC classification: PS3554.O8274 M3 1999