IN THE SUMMER OF 1953, on the island of Jamaica, a middle-aged woman woke her three daughters in the predawn hours and had themdress without making a sound. Minutes later they departed their tenement-yard home and were hurrying towardthe Kingston docks, each girl carrying a bagsecretly packed by her mother the night before. By first light they’d boarded a ship bound for England—though their final destination was a village in Ireland. Over two decades later, the youngest girl on the ship would become my mother.
To this day, no one in my family knows the exact reason why my grandmother, Marie Isabel Echlin, made such a hasty departure—though it’s
