People and Peppers

James (Fling with a Demon Lover) turns a love letter to Trinidad into this stylish literary novel filled with sensuous prose and colorful setting. Twenty-something ex-athlete Vivion K. Pinheiro, now a farmer in Trinidad, cultivates a five-acre patch of specialty spicy peppers called Moruga Red Scorpion. He flies off to New York City in search of a distributor to market and sell his prized pepper crop to restaurants. Meantime, his live-in girlfriend, Shanika "Nikki" Grant-Ali, discovers she is pregnant with their child while she's pursuing her lucrative career as a much sought-after portrait painter. The other strong, independent woman in Vivion's life is his wealthy mother, Andaluza Ashaki Pinheiro, a real estate mogul, who spoils her only son by deeding him a former cocoa plantation. She also indulges Vivion's other whims by bankrolling the construction of his "dream palace," where he grows his hot peppers. While in New York City, Vivion meets and befriends jolly Hideo Arata, "the hot pepper baron of Japan," and invites him to come and inspect his pepper-growing project. The protagonist's passion for agriculture and ecological issues help to add the needed character depth to the rich-kid stereotype. (Mar.)