Summoned to Britain by a father she has never known, eleven-year-old Hyacinth exchanges the warmth and exuberance of the backstreets of Kingston, Jamaica, for the gloom of inner-city life. She finds herself in a land of strangers, the only black face in a sea of white. Faced at school with the hostility of her classmates, and at home with violence from her father, and a threatening sexuality she does not understand, she seeks refuge in dreams of her homeland--dreams which she must eventually test against the truth. Though academic triumphs help, for Hyacinth the real search is for identity and a place in the world. In her first book black novelist Joan Riley paints a vivid portrait of immigrant experience in Britain, refusing to romanticise its harsh reality.