On a Caribbean island in the mid-1960s, a young girl copes with the heavy cost of migration.

When her mother emigrates to England to find work, Wheeler and her older sisters are left to live with their aunts and cousins. She spends most days with her cousin Donelle, knocking about their island community. They know they must address their elders properly and change their shoes after church. And during the long, quiet weeks of Lent, when the absent sound of the radio seems to follow them down the road, they look forward to kite season. But Donelle is just a child, too, and though her sisters look after her with varying levels of patience, Wheeler couldn’t feel more alone. Everyone tells her that soon her mother will send for her, but how much longer will it be? And as she does her best to navigate the tensions between her aunts, why does it feel like there’s no one looking out for her at all?

A story of sisterhood, secrets, and the sacrifices of love, The Pages of the Sea is a tenderly lyrical portrait of innocence and an intensely moving evocation of what it’s like to be a child left behind.

Anne Hawk's profile page

Anne Hawk grew up in the Caribbean, the UK and Canada. She has worked as a journalist, a paralegal and was for many years a secondary school teacher. She is married and lives in London. The Pages of the Sea is her first novel.

Praise for The Pages of the Sea

“The Pages of the Sea a beautifully written and intimately imagined debut novel coming out of the Caribbean. Anne Hawk weaves a story rarely told, that of those left behind in the wake of migration to the ‘motherland’. Intensely moving and lyrical, here is a story of our times, another piece of the mosaic of our fractured and remade Caribbean lives.”
—Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch

“What can I say except I think this is a great novel? The story breaks your heart and, at the very same time, the writing heals it. Anne Hawk’s vision is miraculously, tenderly lucid. Here is the other side of emigration—the story of one of those left behind representing the stories of so many. I can’t think of a better depiction of the confusions and insights of girlhood.”
—Toby Litt, author of Patience