Saltpickers : & Other Caribbean Stories

Zoila Ellis’s stories restore human community, nature, and ancient beliefs to their rightful places in our misguided world. Her literary landscape spans the Caribbean, England, Central America and the USA. Her stories remind me of the fiction of García Márquez and Earl Lovelace, yet she is a writer of her own time, places and concerns. Women, children, the elderly and, yes, even decent men-and scoundrels, too-are revealed with a keen, just and at times merciless, à la Flannery O’Connor eye. Ellis’s narrative sense is quick, intriguing, and rooted in the natural origins of story telling. These are stories of the recent past, the present and, therefore-undoubtedly-address the future and recall William Faulkner’s “The past is not dead; it’s not even past.”