Rape, the devastation of Hurricane Flora, a child's tragic death, and an indifferent and corrupt government are some of the numerous problems challenging the people of Rosehill. Set on the fictional island of Santabella and spanning three years, You Alone Are Dancing follows the life of young Beatrice Salandy, balancing her ambitions, obligations, and love for Sonny Allen. Determined to create his own opportunities, Sonny leaves Rosehill for the United States in a swirl of promises and expectations. Beatrice remains on Rosehill, sharing her neighbors' struggle, adding their pain to her own, but sharing as well their music and their laughter, their history and their allegiance to it. Like Santabella, set in an indifferent blue sea, Rosehill is part of a larger neglected Caribbean society, and Beatrice must learn to negotiate its tides and ebbs, overcome its storm and ensure its lulls, as she peruses what has to be done. She succeeds--but at a price that changes her life forever, as it does that of Sonny and all of Rosehill. "In Brenda Flanagan's novel, You Alone Are Dancing, there's talk and talk, the life-long dance of talk--it's lyrical, raucous, sorrowful, vibrant, inventive. And there you are, on the island, in the midst and mix of it all. What the best musicians do with wood and brass and air, Brenda Flanagan does with words--she gives them voice and life." --Janet Kauffman, author of Places in the World a Woman Could Walk.
