Tamarind Sky
Inanna Publications
When young white British girl, Selena Jones, marries Aidan Gilmor, a Eurasian immigrant from Sri Lanka in Toronto in the 1960s, she unwittingly enters a complex web of old British colonialism in Ceylon, later Sri Lanka, and an outmoded elite of tea planters that her irascible alcoholic father-in-law, Jack Gilmor, cannot escape. As Selena faces prejudices in Toronto, before the era of prime minister Pierre Elliott's multi-culturalism, she learns to become strong even as events move inexorably to a profound revelation of race and violence at the heart of Sri Lanka.
Startlingly honest and humorous, Wheatley explores the subtle influence of colonialism on the psyches of her characters who find themselves caught on the wrong side of history.
“... an unusual and readable book of nostalgia, triumph and confusion.”