Ever Since We Small by Celeste Mohammed

An intricately woven tapestry of stories where survival, resilience and self-discovery are passed down through several generations of an Indo-Trinidadian family, Ever Since We Small is a sweeping epic that takes us from the days of the British Raj in India to multicultural modern Trinidad.

Written in a blend of Standard English and several flavors of Trinidad kriol, Ever Since We Small follows the bloodline of a young woman, Jayanti, following her decision to become a girmitiya, an indentured laborer in the Caribbean. The generational after-effects of this decision are seen in the lives of Jayanti's grandson, Lall, who seeks to escape the rural village where he was born, but instead becomes seduced and corrupted by urban life, and sis son, Shiva, who is forced to take a child-bride, Salma, but never recovers from the guilt. Heartache then follows for their three children, who must each find a way to accept and yet move past their parents' failed example.

Along the journey of these ten interconnected stories, the alchemy necessary to turn the family's inheritance of pain into a "generation of gold" requires intervention by the living and dead, the "real" and the mythical, the mundane and the magical, the secular and the sacred.