Brown Sugar

“Brown Sugar is the biography of Clare King. Her life begins on an idyllic but remote sugar plantation in the 1940s. Together with her parents and six siblings, she had a very happy childhood. However, immortality and the grim reaper seemed to have been an impending presence in Clare’s life from the age of twelve, when she personally witnessed a distraught mother, carrying a dead infant on her back, seeking help for the internment of her child at the local Catholic convent as she was too poor to do this on her own. Like the first four notes of Mozart’s fifth symphony, the grim reaper (or Death, as we call him) was an impending presence in Clare King’s life. She learned to face this sting with great endurance. Death has claimed her parents, two siblings, three children, a few dear friends, and finally, her beloved husband, Hector. All her life she had to fight a battle with death and its scourge on her loved ones. She is now a great councilor to the bereaved. Brown Sugar pays tribute to Clare’s resilience and tenacity against this battle with death and dying. Clare King is a mesmerizing and informative storyteller” (Lorraine Richards).