A stunning new novel about a young jazz singer caught between cultures from the acclaimed author of The Icarus Girl. Maja Carmen Carrera was only five years old when the family emigrated from the Caribbean to London, leaving her with one complete memory: a woman singing - in a voice both eerie and enthralling - at their farewell party, while little Maja peered out from beneath a table. Now, almost twenty years later, Maja herself is a singer with a small band, in love with Aaron, pregnant with a son, and haunted by what she calls 'her Cuba.' She struggles to find a voice of her own in either the Spanish or English of her people's conquistadors or the Ewe, Igbo or Swahili of her roots. It seems all that's left is silence. Her mother finds solace and identity in her faith, while her father rails against his wife's superstitions and the lost dreams of the Castro revolution. And sweet, serious, fifteen-year-old Tomas runs away from the bullies at school on quicksilver feet.
On the other side of the reality wall, Yemaya Saramagua, Yemaya of the ocean, lives in the Somewherehouse with two doors: one opening to London, the other to Lagos. Yemaya is troubled by the ease with which her fellow gods have disguised themselves as saints and reappeared under different names and faces.