A Matter of Seasons

Set in the 1970s, within the political context of the maelstrom caused by Michael Manley's attempted "Democratic Socialism," A Matter of Seasons revolves around the visionary attempt to alter the destiny of Jamaica's historical trajectory, and the characters who occupy that stage in one way or another. Enter Doug Austin, the educated, idealistic, scion of a well-known family. Doug attempts to break with his family's plantocratic past and its own reverberations in his soul, by returning to Jamaica and throwing himself into the island's development as a teacher at a secondary school in the country. His original intentions and naive idealism are challenged by the politics of poverty, and ultimately broken by the immanence of insurmountable race and class questions and the tragedy which afflicts his family. Tragic but touching, comic and suspenseful, A Matter of Seasons is of immense relevance to Jamaica's ongoing dilemmas.