George Rosen, heir to his family’s massive fruit orchards, is accused of murdering a poor hotel maid. What should have been a legal issue, easily handled in the courts, blows up into a political firestorm, threatening to c0nsume everything in its path.
It is 1962, and the brutal crime shocks the Caribbean nation of Jamaica as it stands on the eve of independence, after 300 years of British rule. A power struggle between the land-rich families and the radical socialists, threatens a culture war, a ripping away of the thin veneer of a class-conscious, color-sensitive society. As the father of the dead girl’s baby, George is desperate to find his child even as his life hangs in the balance.
Three other fathers, just as desperate, tethered in unforeseen ways, are also in the cauldron of this crime: George’s father, the formidable Norman Rosen, unwavering in his faith; Tony Khampala, the young English barrister, with his shrewd legal mind and political astuteness, comes to deliver fire control. But his unreconciled past with the Rosen family, makes him vulnerable and unpredictable. Then there is Elias Khan, the imposing custody sergeant who is a walking enigma – no one understands his blind protectiveness of George.
Each of these men asks, how far should a father go to protect his child? And how far is not far enough? The answers they find, expose their failures and shortcomings as fathers. When confronted by their wounded children, and an overwhelming political situation, they are brought to the end of themselves. In despair, they cry out to the Great Father above, for another chance to love their children in a more perfect way. And He hears them.
[And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. Malachi 4:6]
