Greenwichtown

Fay Myrtle's life begins with her mother and siblings near a Jamaican plantation in Joyce Palmer's Greenwichtown. She goes to live in the city of the book's title with Flo an older sister she has never met who turns out to be a source of constant trouble. Fay grows up surrounded by poverty, violence and misery, attending school and later giving birth to twins but she is forced to leave the country to find work in order to support her children. Palmer's writing is spare and unflinching; while her plot is relentlessly grim, she does offer a glimmer of hope at the end. Agent, Jean Naggar. (St. Martin's, $23.95 272p ISBN 0-312-26597-2)