Fiction. African American Studies. These stories of triumph and despair present a gallery of characters, Caribbean immigrants struggling against the odds, as they make their way through the maze of urban life. Set in Montreal, LIVES breaks the stereotypes to give us a side of Canada rarely acknowledged. Mary Fellows is a sex-worker organizing a demonstration on St Catherine Street; Margaret is on a perpetual quest for a suitable man, her latest folly a suave, much younger man she brought over from Jamaica; Greta, a domestic help, proudly holds up her son's high school diploma; but can he read it? Lives adds to Thomas's already considerable reputation as a chronicler of black life in Montreal.

Author City: Montreal, QC CAN

H. Nigel Thomas was born in St. Vincent and now lives in Montreal. After a stint as a high school teacher in Montreal, Thomas was for many years a professor of US literature at Université Laval, before retiring. He is the author of three novels, Spirits in the Dark (shortlisted for the QWF Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction), BEHIND THE FACE OF WINTER, and RETURN TO ARCADIA; the story collections How Loud Can the Village Cock Crow and LIVES: WHOLE AND OTHERWISE; and a book of poetry, Moving through Darkness. Thomas has also published two works of nonfiction, From Folklore to Fiction: A Study of Fold Heroes and Rituals in the Black American Novel, and WHY WE WRITE: CONVERSATIONS WITH AFRICAN CANADIAN POETS AND NOVELISTS.