In the discovery of a fossilized tree stump deep off the coast of Bermuda, Angela Barry finds a potent metaphor of long-term climate change against which to measure the alarms, resentments, and hopes of future possibilities expressed by her characters as they respond to Bermuda's emergence from colonial status. Modernity brings challenges to the old racial, cultural, and religious hierarchies that have dominated the island. Angela Barry weaves a rich and absorbing multi-voiced narrative in which different perspectives--insider/outsider, youth/age, Black/white--are each given sympathetic space and a convincing sense of growth through the span of the novel.