The Bread The Devil Knead Av Lisa Allen-Agostini

Alethea Lopez is about to turn 40. A fashionable, mixed-race boutique manager who lives and works in Trinidad's capital city, Port of Spain, she is feisty, fiercely independent and morally ambiguous. Her secrets show only in her bruised skin and the occasional glimpse into her shattered sense of self. When Alethea witnesses a woman murdered by her jealous lover, her eyes are opened to the lives of the women all around her: from her colleague Tamika, who is engaged to marry an unfaithful man, and her childhood best friend Jankie, the teenage bride of their PE teacher, to her own mother, Marcia, who allowed her daughter to be sexually abused in exchange for the family's financial and emotional stability. In first-person Creole, Alethea brings us her truth in an arresting, unsparing Trinidadian voice. As her story unfolds, we see her navigate a dangerous path between her abusive partner Leo, a failed musician who wants to own her body and soul, and the spineless boss she sleeps with only