A House for Miss Pauline
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When the stones of her house begin to rattle and shift and call out mysterious messages to her in the middle of the night, Pauline Sinclair, age ninety-nine, knows she will not make it to her 100th birthday. She has lived a modest life in Mason Hall, a rural Jamaican village, educating herself with stolen books, raising her two children, surviving by becoming one of the most successful ganja farmers in the area, and experiencing both deep passion and true loss with her beloved “baby father” Clive.
Behind this seemingly benign façade, however, Miss Pauline has buried many secrets. To avenge her enslaved ancestors, she has built her house, stone by stone, from the ruins of a plantation on her land. And she knows more than she has told about the disappearance of Turner Buchanan—a white American man who came to Mason Hall decades ago to claim her land as his and his children’s. The whispering stones, Miss Pauline realizes, are telling her that she must make peace with the past before she dies.
With help from her American granddaughter, Justine, and Lamont, a teenager she enlists to drive her around the island, she sets off to find the people she has wronged. But as the people and stories of her past come to invade her present, she discovers that there are shocking secrets even she could not have anticipated.
Lyrical, funny, eerie, and profound, infused with the patois and natural beauty of Jamaica, A House for Miss Pauline tells a timely and nuanced story about identity, colonialism, and land—and introduces an unforgettable heroine who is a model for living life on her own terms.
Published By Algonquin Books
Format Hardback
Number Of Pages 320
Publication Date 02/25/2025
ISBN 9781643757223
Dimensions 6 inches x 9 inches
"Where has Diana McCaulay been all my reading life? In this engrossing and glorious novel—reminiscent of V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas—prepare for full immersion in the world of Jamaica, not from a tourist's perspective but from the mind and heart and spirit of the unforgettable Miss Pauline, whose enslaved ancestors built the island that has historically dispossessed them. This is a profound and beautiful novel rich with encounters with the past and atonements in the present."
"History’s crimes unfurl in this magical story—a story as Jamaican as the stones in the title—and Diana McCaulay’s immaculate, breathtaking writing carries it with poise and conviction. This novel is poetry."
"Diana McCaulay is one of the Caribbean’s finest writers. As an environmental activist, a Jamaican woman, and a writer of both contemporary and historical fiction, her novels are building blocks of the current Caribbean canon and will be read for years to come."
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