This Son Rises from the West (Paperback)

This story describes a young Jamaican man from a poor, hard working family who faces gut wrenching emotional turmoil as he struggles with his sexuality and human frailty within a society that frowns on anything outside the norm, to discover hidden strengths from within. When the immigration craze hits the West Indian islands, he leaves his home and all he holds dear to try his fortune in the Mother land of England along with thousands of other colonial patriots. Truly alone for the first time in his life, he undergoes an emotional odyssey as he weaves his way through debilitating illness, color prejudice, riots that changed the face of the British public, and rejection. Through his ingrained cultural beliefs of colonialism that mediocrity was his due, he rose to the challenge and attended Art College to become distinguished in his career. He conquers all when he is singled out and invited into the queen's presence and honored--something that every island child dreams of but only few rare people have ever achieve it.
Monica Dyer was born in Kingston, capital of Jamaica, West Indies. She is the youngest daughter of seven children. At a time when education was not readily available to young people with limited financial means on the island, Ms. Dyer was determined to reshape her future from the narrow confines that was the accepted norm. She attended commercial school, and being an avid, cover to cover reader from childhood, she landed a job in a government agency. She worked her way up to becoming a civil servant, working as registrar, a position she held for over twelve years. She has been married for fifty-one years to her childhood sweetheart, with three children, ten grand children and three great grandchildren.
As soon as she could, Ms. Dyer migrated to the United States where she has now lived for over forty-five years. She followed the employment route through child care to Wall Street, where she did key-punching in a bank at nights while caring for children during the day.