cover image Jamaica and Me: The Story of an Unusual Friendship

Jamaica and Me: The Story of an Unusual Friendship

Linda Atkinson. Random House (NY), $23.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-375-50073-2

In the mid-1980s, Atkins, a psychoanalyst with two college-aged children, volunteered to work with displaced girls at a New York City hospital. In this involving and deeply moving account, she describes her friendship with Jamaica, an eight-year-old African American who had been found living in subway tunnels with crack addicts. The child's violent outbursts, lying and stealing alienated her from the staffs at the hospital and the group home to which she was transferred. Finding a buried but receptive spark in Jamaica, Atkins spent considerable time with her, including weekends at the family's beach house. With determination fueled by the conviction that there was no hope for Jamaica at her group home, Atkins placed the girl with a foster mother, who planned to adopt her and take her home to Georgia. The author then lost contact with the girl. Her memoir provides an unsettling commentary on a beleaguered social service system that often fails to help homeless children. Author tour. (June)