When Banana Stains Fade

“When Banana Stains Fade will draw its readers into the compelling drama of over four generations of a Jamaican family, told through the lifeline of its women.” –Rachel Manley, author and winner of 1997 Governor General’s Award for Literature in Canada for Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood

When twenty-six-year-old Zarah returns home in 2002, desperate to reconcile with the family she abandoned, their first night together revives memories of events that led to her abandonment and their hopes fizzle.

Their reflections take the reader back to the inciting event years before… her thirteenth birthday, the onslaught of Hurricane Gilbert, her mother's shocking miscarriage, and her parents' separation.

Determined to warn Zarah against life's treacheries, her grandmother Naomi discloses ugly societal and family secrets, but Zarah distances herself, scoffing at hints of a curse hatched on a banana field decades before.

As damaged as the ancestors she once disdained, Zarah finds true friendship at a support group, accepts culpability, and finds her way home to battle for the awakening and reconciliation essential to wholeness.

When her grandmother dies, Esther and Bradley travel with Zarah to the spot Naomi requested, and she sprinkles her grandmother's ashes over the ocean, standing on the threshold of her second chance to become "the right person."

Frances-Marie Coke is a lifelong educator, born in Jamaica and living in Florida. She is a writing consultant with Keiser University. After a decade as a high school teacher, she worked in human resources at a large telecommunications firm in Jamaica and later entered academia as an administrator and lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. For decades, creative writing has been a major part of her life. Her publications include two volumes of poetry: Intersections published by Peepal Tree Press, Leeds, UK, and The Balm of Dusk Lilies published by the Jamaica Observer Literary Publications. In January 2020, her memoir, The Spirit of Clovelly Park: Learning and Teaching at Kingston College was published with iUniverse.