NATURAL MYSTIC, A RASTAFARIAN MADONNA AND THE UNDERSIDE OF PARADISE NOTES FROM A WRITER'S BOOK OF CURES AND SPELLS Marcia Douglas knows the underside of paradise very well; she grew up in Kingston- Jamaica's bustling capital, the place she has referred to as the "edge of the world" and the setting for her long-awaited second novel, NOTES FROM A WRITER'S BOOK OF CURES AND SPELLS (Peepal Tree Press, November 15, 2005.) The seed for this book came from childhood recollections of squatters in a Kingston cemetery, their clotheslines stretched above tombstones, a young girl singing amid the dead. This story travels the riff of a Marley tune and comes from afar. NOTES has at its center a Jamaican writer, Flamingo, whose life becomes intertwined with her fictional characters: Dahlia, a young girl growing up in ghetto Kingston; her beautiful one-eyed sister, Alva, who dreams of fashion design in New York; their brother, Paul, who through his love for the coconut cakes in Mrs. Ying's (the Chinese shopkeeper's) showcase, comes to be called "Made in China;" and a Rastafarian Madonna who sits on a windowsill stealing keys, bottle caps and hair pins as people pass by. Through poverty, immigration and Jamaica's political upheaval, the siblings are dispersed, and it is Alva who solicits the help of Flamingo to bring the fictional family back together. In the world of this novel, storytelling serves as a metaphor for healing and the ability to tell a story is an act of magic. This is an interesting text for lovers of both literature and visual art. Modeled after a writer's personal notebook, the novel makes a one-of-a-kind signature with pages embellished with the author’s own whimsical sketches as well as an appendix of related found material, dream fragments, notes, clippings and photographs of a series of Jamaican soul dolls - one for each character- made from island seeds, pods, moss, twigs and other natural material. Part of the proceeds from this book go toward assisting Balmagie Primary, an inner city school in Kingston, Jamaica. Read an excerpt from Notes NOTES FROM A WRITER'S BOOK OF CURES AND SPELLS Peepal Tree Press: Leeds, November, 2005