Joyce Palmer was born in Jamaica. She currently resides in Florida and is working on her second novel entitled, "The Love Life of Senior Citizen Bob Withers." GREENWICHTOWN CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE GREENWICHTOWN AT AMAZON.COM The New York Times Book Review: "...a gripping coming-of-age novel in which the upbeat ending feels both believable and well deserved." From Publishers Weekly: 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. Essence: "[An] inspiring view of a girl's coming-of-age in a challenging environment." Book Description Set in Jamaica, Greenwichtown is the story of Fay Myrtle, an innocent, young girl who lives in a shack outside a Jamaican plantation. An older sister takes her from the village to live in the inner-city ghettos of Greenwichtown. There she attends school, and her inner life thrives despite abuse by her sister and the squalor surrounding her. As she struggles to come of age, she is caught up in a web of betrayal and is devastated by the death of the man she loves. Unwilling to submit to her despair, especially for the sake of her newborn twins, Fay "goes foreign," seeking a job as a domestic abroad, and relinquishing her babies to the care of her sister. Powerfully chronicling the lonely and tormented terrain that is the fate of many young island women who leave their children and families in order to financially support them, Joyce Palmer creates a forceful character whose reality transcends the page. Written in a voice all its own and with the veracity and strength of the best of Caribbean literature, Joyce Palmer writes with raw talent and true freshness, in a voice that's uncontrived, unselfconscious, and immediate.