About Force Ripe

“If there is a book that you really want to read and it has not been written yet, then you must write it.”  Toni Morrison 


cover pic01 Force Ripe
is a wonderful and exciting evocation of West Indian culture. It is not just another damaged  childhood story, but an exciting evocation of an important period of Grenada’s history. 

 Set against the backdrop of the Grenada Revolution, Lee takes the reader on a journey from her childhood -growing up in a community where it was very normal for children to be brought up by grandparents,  Aunties,  Nenens and neighbours, playing bare feet in the road from sunrise to sundown- to her father’s  conversion to Rastafarian and her  life in a Rastafarian commune, where her life takes on a dramatic  change. Abandoned by her father and in the absence of her mother, who was terrified of being subjected to  their father’s life choices, Lee deals with her life by smoking marijuana to take her away.

 Lee’s rescue comes at the peril of the Rastafarians, when the People’s Revolutionary Army raids the  commune, detaining all Rastafarians, including Lee and her brother. Lee then begins another journey of  survival, through adolescence in foster care with a family she doesn’t know, trying to fit in and bury her past.