De Rightest Place

Indira Gabriel, recently abandoned by her lover, Solomon, embarks on a project to reinvigorate a dilapidated bar into something special. In this warm, funny, sexy, and bittersweet novel, Barbara Jenkins draws together a richly-drawn cast of characters, like a Trinidadian Cheers.Meet Bostic, Solomon’s boyhood friend, who is determined to keep the bar as a shrine; I Cynthia, the tale-telling Belmont maco ; KarlLee, the painter with a very complicated love-life; fatherless Jah-Son; and Fritzie, single mum and Indira’s loyal right-hand woman. At the book’s centre is the unforgettable Indira, with her ebullience and sadness, her sharpness and honesty, obsession with the daily horoscope and addiction to increasingly absurd self-help books.In this warm, funny, sexy, and bittersweet novel, Barbara Jenkins hears, like Sam Selvon, the melancholy behind “the kiff-kiff laughter”, as darkness from Indira’s past threatens her drive to make a new beginning.

Barbara Jenkins was born in Trinidad and lives there. Writing came as a late life gift. Her debut collection of short stories, Sic Transit Wagon and other stories (Peepal Tree Press) was awarded the Guyana Prize for Literature. Since she started writing in 2008, her stories have won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize Caribbean Region in 2010 and 2011; the Wasafiri New Writing Prize; The Canute Brodhurst Prize for short fiction, The Caribbean Writer; the Small Axe short story competition, 2011; the Romance Category, My African Diaspora Short Story Contest; and the inaugural The Caribbean Communications Network (CCN) Prize for a film review of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, 2012. In 2013 she was named winner of the inaugural Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize. Her debut short story collection, Sic Transit Wagon (Peepal Tree, 2013) was awarded the Guyana Prize for Literature Caribbean Award.She completed her MFA at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad, in 2012. She spends her time reading, writing, singing in a choir, serving on the board of an NGO and visiting her globally-scattered three children and eight grandchildren.