The tale of a generation morally adrift.
William Fletcher is an aspiring novelist who has come to New York to escape his affluent West Indian roots. A chance meeting in a Greenwich Village bar reunites him with two of his childhood companions: Laurence, who left the poverty of his village to become an Oxford scholar and poet, and the vivacious Rachel, William's second cousin and first love. Together the three make a liquor-soaked pledge to return 'home' to Trinidad for the annual carnival. As the festival's ecstasy slides in to a fog of ganja, alcohol and endless calypso beat, Rachel casts her eyes on Eddoes, member of the isolated, Rastafarian-like Earth People, and the year's young and scandalous carnival King. Eddoes has escaped his sequestered life in the mysterious Hell Valley for a few days of excitement. It is to this remote place that the group goes to cool down after the festival. In the rainforest they hope for a secret paradise from which to begin anew. But even here the demons of history, prejudice, and hatred violently intrude, as the novel's startling conclusion forces all to face both the power - and impotence - of human resilience and human love.
