Felicity Alexander is supposed to be charming audiences at New York's Metropolitan Opera, not placed under house arrest in Grenada in October 1983 when the Americans invade.

Born and raised in Winnipeg, the daughter of a Grenadian woman and an absent white father, she is blessed with enviable beauty and an extraordinary singing voice. Arriving in London to study opera in 1965, she finds early success and joy on stage, and a sense of belonging in Claude Buckingham's arms. Members of the West Indian Students Association, Claude and his friends are law students and activists. They plan to return home to Grenada and overthrow the corrupt dictator, “Uncle” Percy Tibbs.

Felicity and Claude’s intense affair cannot survive their competing destinies. Claude brings revolution to Grenada and becomes a Minister in the new Black Pearls of Freedom government; Felicity devotes herself to music, conquering the racism and sexism of the opera world to rise to international stardom. The brighter she shines, the more she struggles to find her place and purpose in life.

Her career in ascendance, Felicity accepts an invitation to perform in Grenada. The red sky of revolution calls to her almost as much as the hope of Claude’s embrace. But their reunion is interrupted by a coup. Surrounded by soldiers and guns, Felicity’s voice is born anew. She has found her cause.

Zilla Jones is an African-Canadian anti-racist educator, lawyer, mother, and singer of Caribbean, Chinese, and European heritage, writing on Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg). She was born in the UK and now lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is a winner of the Journey Prize, a finalist for The Writers’ Trust Bronwen Wallace Emerging Writers Award, and a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals including The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, and Bayou Magazine.

Zilla Jones' profile page

“I adore Felicity Alexander, the woman at the heart of this novel. She is complex, delightfully melodramatic, and passionate about sex, opera and politics. Hers is a voice, oh so full, that refuses to be neither circumscribed nor colonized. Read this novel and fall in love.”

David Bergen, author of The Time in Between

“Zilla Jones’ lavish saga spanning four countries and fifteen years, is a coming-of-age account of its star diva, Felicity, and indeed the island of Grenada itself. Jones makes the glorious and tragic island story one about people, both the architects of ideological hope, and the victims of their own hubris, miscalculation and disappointment. Their passions, political, cultural and romantic, unfold to create layers of tension and misunderstanding, unity and division in their personal lives as surely as their bold dreams create hope and pride and then disaster on the international stage. Felicity, who straddles two worlds, black and white, finds her voice through music, which becomes her life’s calling. In this telling, she bucks suffocating strictures of family, religion and the various mores of society. Jones' distance from formal facts of history frees the reader from nit-picking the details, but it also widens our perspective to human and therefore universal truths ― and to the effects of the colonial experience and the agonizingly personal toll it takes in the drive to free ourselves from the toxic yoke of colonialism.”

Rachel Manley, author of The Fellowship, The Black Peacock, and the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood

“Historical fiction packs the same punch as a five-act opera in Zilla Jones’ much-anticipated The World So Wide. With a heart as complex as Grenada’s turbulent past, heroine Felicity Alexander witnesses her homeland brace against waves of political change. Standing ovation and flowers thrown at Jones’ feet for this brilliant first novel.”

Catherine Hernandez, author and screenwriter of Scarborough the book and film