Paule Marshall's acclaimed, ground-breaking novel Brown Girl, Brownstones establsihed her as a writer of enormous ability with a talent for bringing emotional truths to life. Her long-awaited new novel, Daughters, big and bittersweet, captures the jangle of the city and the musical lilt of the Carribean as it cuts back and forth from New York to the Islands, from present to past, and back again. At its center is Ursa Beatrice MacKenzie, a well-educated, good-hearted young black woman who is struggling to make a career and life for herself in New York. But swirling around her are several crises, including an abortion, a decision to break up with her boyfriend, the start of a new job, and, finally, the need to come to terms with her family back home -- her father, a crusading politician known as the PM, and her mother, Estelle, a former teacher from Hartford. Paule Marshall evokes every intimate detail and passionate feeling of this extraordinary family, creating a vivid, many-layered portrait of colorful, complex women and men trying to find themselves -- and one another -- in an ever-changing world.