Pynter Bender

the long version

"In a Caribbean village perched above cane fields, a woman gives birth to twins. The second child, Pynter Bender, is born blind fully two days after the first; a sign, his family believes, that he will not live into adulthood. When, as a young boy, Pynter's sight is miraculously restored, a landscape of luminous physical beauty is revealed to him, but also the unrelenting hardship faced by his family of formidable women. This is a world where men walk away from their families never to return, and those left behind fight for a better life that can only be achieved through civil attrition and violence, a fight that Pynter cannot avoid being drawn to. Pynter Bender is a novel of resilience and love, from a major new talent in Anglo-Caribbean writing. Jacob Ross describes the birth of a modern West Indian nation and the shaping of its people as they struggle to shuck off the systems that have kept them shackled for centuries."--BOOK JACKET.