How do girls and women create lives and loves larger than the circumstances they've inherited? This is the central question of "The Plundering", my collection of short stories about black girls and women.

The girls and women in these twelve loosely linked stories seek their promised land in a world that renders them small through generational legacies of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Singed by fear and lack, the protagonists--precocious girls and aging women--strive to create their most promising selves. Their desires, however, are at odds with the limits placed on their physical, emotional and economic states through slavery, rape and mental illness disease.

Presented in reverse-time, The Plundering's themes include race, urgency, familial relationships, and faith. With the backdrop and unique character and voice of Barbados and its people, some of the stories may bring to mind Naomi Jackson's debut, The Star Side of Bird Hill.