The Last Warner Woman

by Kei Miller

Once upon a time in Jamaica a young woman went somewhere that no one had visited for years. It may have been nestled in a valley between the Stone Hill mountains of St Catherine, four rocking chairs on a veranda surveying a garden full of bougainvillea and vegetables. Or perhaps it was merely a pastel-coloured house on an ordinary street in Spanish Town.
One thing everyone agrees on: this is the place that Adamine Bustamante was born.
When Adamine grows up she discovers she has the gift of 'warning': the power to both protect and terrify. But no one tells her that in England her prophecies of hurricanes and earthquakes will meet with a different kind of fear. Now Adamine wants to tell her story. But she must wrestle for the truth with 'Mr Writer Man', for he is taking her words and twisting them
A young Jamaican woman with a gift of prophecy embarks on a journey that will take her from a leper colony, to revivalist meetings, then to England.


(From Publisher).

Kei Miller was born in Jamaica in 1978. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow. His collection of short stories The Fear of Stones was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. His first novel The Same Earth was selected for Waterstone’s New Voices and shortlisted for the Scottish Books of the Year.

Miller uses a combination of comedy and realism to produce another compelling must-read novel. We are taken into the psyche of Jamaican, Adamine, who migrates to England where she tries to use her gift of "warning" and who becomes confined to a mental institution.