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Tea by the Sea
A woman searches for the daughter who was taken from her long ago in “a powder keg of a novel, where secrets and lies explode into truth and consequences” (Marlon James, National Book Award finalist and author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf).To find the daughter taken from her, Plum Valentine must first locate the child’s father, who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her. From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, Tea by the Sea traces Plum’s circuitous route to find her daughter—and explores how Plum’s and the priest’s love came apart.“The forbidden love story of Plum and Lenworth comes alive in this heart-rending novel . . . heady twists and turns delivered in an urgent and beautiful prose.” —Lauren Francis-Sharma, author of Book of the Little Axe“A moving portrait of identity, belonging, family, immigration, and the power of maternal love.” —Washington Independent Review of Books
285 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2020
16 people are currently reading
804 people want to read
About the author
Donna Hemans
5 books75 followersDonna Hemans is the author of two novels: River Woman and Tea by the Sea (forthcoming Spring 2020 from Red Hen Press. Her short fiction has appeared in Caribbean Writer, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad, among others. She is an editor at Pree, a Caribbean online magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
June 26, 2020
4.5 Stars
When Lenworth and Plum’s baby girl is born, after an exhausting labor and delivery, Plum wakes only to find that her baby is not in the hospital nursery, and for hours she holds out hope, only to be faced with the nightmare that her baby is missing even after a frantic hospital-wide search.
Lenworth has taken their baby, whom he names Opal, which he believes should be viewed as a ‘gift’ to Plum, as she is barely more than a child, herself, and will be free to live her life unencumbered by having a child to take care of. A life better than the women in his family have led. But Opal is, unsurprisingly, devastated, abandoned by the man she loved and losing her daughter as she slept, only to wake to her worst nightmare. She came to Jamaica, originally, on vacation with her Jamaican born parents from their home in Brooklyn, who insisted on leaving her at a boarding school, to keep her in line.
Twice abandoned, first by her parents, and now by Lenworth, she eventually returns to Brooklyn, periodically returning to Jamaica to look for her daughter.
This is a story of broken hearts, of misguided intentions gone horribly wrong, of abandonment, of generations repeating the mistakes of the generations before, of never being able to let go of the bond or the love between a mother and her child, and of lies and the damage wrought by them.
’There were remnants of the girl who had a dream and a goal and a belief that she mattered.’
This is also the story of a girl who once had a dream, goals, and the belief that she mattered. And so, that was what she focused on, ’mattering, on not being a person so easily discarded and left behind.’
She begins her mission to track down Lenworth, to find her daughter. A mission that will not be easy or quickly fulfilled. Heartbreaking at times, and compelling with the building tension more often, I couldn’t put this down until I finished the last page.
Published: 1 June 2020
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Red Hen Press via Edelweiss
When Lenworth and Plum’s baby girl is born, after an exhausting labor and delivery, Plum wakes only to find that her baby is not in the hospital nursery, and for hours she holds out hope, only to be faced with the nightmare that her baby is missing even after a frantic hospital-wide search.
Lenworth has taken their baby, whom he names Opal, which he believes should be viewed as a ‘gift’ to Plum, as she is barely more than a child, herself, and will be free to live her life unencumbered by having a child to take care of. A life better than the women in his family have led. But Opal is, unsurprisingly, devastated, abandoned by the man she loved and losing her daughter as she slept, only to wake to her worst nightmare. She came to Jamaica, originally, on vacation with her Jamaican born parents from their home in Brooklyn, who insisted on leaving her at a boarding school, to keep her in line.
Twice abandoned, first by her parents, and now by Lenworth, she eventually returns to Brooklyn, periodically returning to Jamaica to look for her daughter.
This is a story of broken hearts, of misguided intentions gone horribly wrong, of abandonment, of generations repeating the mistakes of the generations before, of never being able to let go of the bond or the love between a mother and her child, and of lies and the damage wrought by them.
’There were remnants of the girl who had a dream and a goal and a belief that she mattered.’
This is also the story of a girl who once had a dream, goals, and the belief that she mattered. And so, that was what she focused on, ’mattering, on not being a person so easily discarded and left behind.’
She begins her mission to track down Lenworth, to find her daughter. A mission that will not be easy or quickly fulfilled. Heartbreaking at times, and compelling with the building tension more often, I couldn’t put this down until I finished the last page.
Published: 1 June 2020
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Red Hen Press via Edelweiss
June 19, 2020
Tea by the Sea travels between Brooklyn and Jamaica along with Plum who is in search of her daughter who was taken from her shortly after she gave birth. This is a beautiful, emotional, heartfelt story of love, hope, and healing. More thoughts to come.
I received a gifted copy. All opinions are my own.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader
I received a gifted copy. All opinions are my own.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader
June 14, 2020
Plum Valentine is seventeen and has just given birth to a baby girl in Jamaica. Her situation is complicated because the baby’s father, Lenworth, is twenty-five and her tutor. She has only been in Jamaica for a short time and was sent by her parents to finish high school. Lenworth abducts the baby from the hospital and vanishes. Plum is crushed after losing her child and being abandoned by her lover.
Back in Brooklyn, Plum slowly moves forward with her life but never gives up searching for her daughter. Every year on her child’s birthday she wonders what significant milestone was stolen from her. She continually gets leads from a private investigator but none are successful. One afternoon while reading a local newspaper, she recognizes Lenworth’s face in a photo. She quickly makes plans to confront him and take any steps needed to get her child home.
Tea By The Sea by Donna Hemans is a heartfelt and emotional journey of a mother’s unending search. This story dramatically portrays the strength of families and the unconditional bond between mother and child.
Back in Brooklyn, Plum slowly moves forward with her life but never gives up searching for her daughter. Every year on her child’s birthday she wonders what significant milestone was stolen from her. She continually gets leads from a private investigator but none are successful. One afternoon while reading a local newspaper, she recognizes Lenworth’s face in a photo. She quickly makes plans to confront him and take any steps needed to get her child home.
Tea By The Sea by Donna Hemans is a heartfelt and emotional journey of a mother’s unending search. This story dramatically portrays the strength of families and the unconditional bond between mother and child.
June 23, 2020
A tender, thoughtful, and powerful story about a mothers love. Donna Heman’s evocative storytelling completely drew me into this mother’s journey. Plum was a 17-year-old girl living in Jamaica away from her parents when she begins a relationship with an older man. When Plum finds herself pregnant she thinks this man is going to take care of her and her baby. But the man has other plans he kidnapps the baby from the hospital and Plum goes home to Brooklyn heartbroken and alone. Over the years Plum thinks of her baby often wondering how her life is and hiring private investigators to find her. Then one day Plum spots a picture of the man in the newspaper and heads back to Jamaica to find her daughter. What follows is a tender and emotional story about the strength of a mothers love and the power of her determination. Plum is living every mothers nightmare and there were moments in the story I just had to put the book down because I was just so devastated for her. This is a book that really made me think about why bad things happen to good people? Plum had such a big heart and that made this story so much harder. However I’d like to emphasize this is really a story of love and hope above all. And even though there are some emotional moments it really was a beautiful story about the power of motherhood.
August 3, 2020
Tea By The Sea is Donna Hemans sophomore novel about grief, abandonment and agency.
The story opens up in Jamaica, we meet a young man, Lenworth and a new born baby girl looking for a specific house in remote town outside of the second city- Montego Bay. Lenworth doesn’t know how to navigate this new reality with a recently born baby without raising suspicions of the people in the town. He concocts a story about the baby’s mother, finds someone to help with raising the baby, he gets a job in carpentry at a high school nearby and begins building a life for him and the child.
A seventeen-year-old mother, Plum Valentine wakes up after giving birth, requests to hold her child and is told the father is currently with the child, she should rest. The mother insists on seeing her child and the nurse sounds an alarm and that is when they realize the child was taken from the hospital without the mother’s consent or knowledge. Plum spends over ten years searching for her daughter, numerous trips back to Jamaica, having a private investigator, numerous leads but nothing comes to fruition.
One bright New York day as Plum is playing with her twin girls she comes up on a newspaper clipping with the face of the man she’s been looking for over twenty years. Plum needs to figure out her next move, how does she approach the man who took her daughter from her and disappeared out of her life?
Donna Hemans write a moving story about abandonment and displacement. I loved how she was able to show the theme throughout the book starting with Plum’s parents sending her to Jamaica to live with her aunt who she barely knows because she was getting “force ripe”. This is an ageless Caribbean story- the misbehaving teen, sent to the Caribbean so they can start acting right, but do they act right? How will their life be affected by the abandonment? These are the questions Hemans answers in such a nuanced way.
I really enjoyed journeying with Plum and Lenworth, seeing how the decisions they made impacted their lives. I loved the parts of the book that were set in Jamaica- it made me a bit homesick to be honest. I felt the ending was a bit rushed and somewhat abrupt, but I know this is a book that will lead to a lot of discussions in book club groups!
Great novel! Congrats Donna Hemans!
The story opens up in Jamaica, we meet a young man, Lenworth and a new born baby girl looking for a specific house in remote town outside of the second city- Montego Bay. Lenworth doesn’t know how to navigate this new reality with a recently born baby without raising suspicions of the people in the town. He concocts a story about the baby’s mother, finds someone to help with raising the baby, he gets a job in carpentry at a high school nearby and begins building a life for him and the child.
A seventeen-year-old mother, Plum Valentine wakes up after giving birth, requests to hold her child and is told the father is currently with the child, she should rest. The mother insists on seeing her child and the nurse sounds an alarm and that is when they realize the child was taken from the hospital without the mother’s consent or knowledge. Plum spends over ten years searching for her daughter, numerous trips back to Jamaica, having a private investigator, numerous leads but nothing comes to fruition.
One bright New York day as Plum is playing with her twin girls she comes up on a newspaper clipping with the face of the man she’s been looking for over twenty years. Plum needs to figure out her next move, how does she approach the man who took her daughter from her and disappeared out of her life?
Donna Hemans write a moving story about abandonment and displacement. I loved how she was able to show the theme throughout the book starting with Plum’s parents sending her to Jamaica to live with her aunt who she barely knows because she was getting “force ripe”. This is an ageless Caribbean story- the misbehaving teen, sent to the Caribbean so they can start acting right, but do they act right? How will their life be affected by the abandonment? These are the questions Hemans answers in such a nuanced way.
I really enjoyed journeying with Plum and Lenworth, seeing how the decisions they made impacted their lives. I loved the parts of the book that were set in Jamaica- it made me a bit homesick to be honest. I felt the ending was a bit rushed and somewhat abrupt, but I know this is a book that will lead to a lot of discussions in book club groups!
Great novel! Congrats Donna Hemans!
June 9, 2020
This was an emotional and harrowing read for me about a situation no mother should ever go through - to have your child taken from you.
The story telling was impactful and left me with the feelings of loss, abandonment, and the unrelenting love of a mother for her child.
It is a deep exploration of the relationships we keep, how we show love and the actions we take stemming from our own weaknesses and past hurts.
Really enjoyed this novel, and the ending left me thinking about this story even days after.
The story telling was impactful and left me with the feelings of loss, abandonment, and the unrelenting love of a mother for her child.
It is a deep exploration of the relationships we keep, how we show love and the actions we take stemming from our own weaknesses and past hurts.
Really enjoyed this novel, and the ending left me thinking about this story even days after.
May 30, 2020
Imagine waking up in the hospital the day after giving birth and asking to see your child only to find out that the baby is gone - she has been taken from the hospital by her father with no indication of where he was taking her or why he was taking her from her mother. Imagine searching 17 years for your baby and following every lead while you try to maintain your own life without losing your mind. And then, by accident, he is found - how will she make him pay for what he's done to her life?
This is Plum's story. Her parents in New York City sent her to an aunt in Jamaica to finish her school so that she would stay out of trouble. This move caused her to feel more abandoned by her parents than she did while living in their house where no one really paid attention to her. She becomes friends with her chemistry teacher, and then more than friends as she feels that being loved and accepted by him will remove her feelings of abandonment. She wakes up the day after their baby is born to find that he has taken the baby and disappeared from her life. Once again she's been left behind and she struggles with that feeling as she begins her search for her baby. For the next 17 years, she searches for her baby even as she marries and has twin daughters, she still wonders if she will ever see her oldest daughter again. Accidently she sees a newspaper article about a priest in NYC and knows immediately it is the father of her baby. Will she finally be able to find the daughter that she has searched for?
This novel is beautifully written - both the characters and the scenery in Jamaica were beautifully described. I felt that pain that Plum was feeling at the loss of her daughter and the reason behind her continued search. I also understood but didn't approve of the reasons that the baby was taken away by her father and the guilt that he felt as he wondered if he had done the right thing.
This is a novel of love and loss, a novel about trying to do the right thing and then questioning yourself for what you did. It was beautiful written and a story that I won't soon forget.
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.
This is Plum's story. Her parents in New York City sent her to an aunt in Jamaica to finish her school so that she would stay out of trouble. This move caused her to feel more abandoned by her parents than she did while living in their house where no one really paid attention to her. She becomes friends with her chemistry teacher, and then more than friends as she feels that being loved and accepted by him will remove her feelings of abandonment. She wakes up the day after their baby is born to find that he has taken the baby and disappeared from her life. Once again she's been left behind and she struggles with that feeling as she begins her search for her baby. For the next 17 years, she searches for her baby even as she marries and has twin daughters, she still wonders if she will ever see her oldest daughter again. Accidently she sees a newspaper article about a priest in NYC and knows immediately it is the father of her baby. Will she finally be able to find the daughter that she has searched for?
This novel is beautifully written - both the characters and the scenery in Jamaica were beautifully described. I felt that pain that Plum was feeling at the loss of her daughter and the reason behind her continued search. I also understood but didn't approve of the reasons that the baby was taken away by her father and the guilt that he felt as he wondered if he had done the right thing.
This is a novel of love and loss, a novel about trying to do the right thing and then questioning yourself for what you did. It was beautiful written and a story that I won't soon forget.
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.
April 16, 2020
This was fun. Couldn’t put it down. Literally.
July 6, 2020
The novel opens with a real shocker. While Plum, an exhausted new mom, rests in her hospital bed after a difficult delivery, Lenworth, the baby daddy, kidnaps the newborn and disappears. The plot slowly unfolds how Plum deals with this loss and also explains the why behind Lenworth's conduct, building to the final confrontation between the two estranged lovers.
Although Hemans tackles some heavy topics like parental rejection, individual agency, and identity reinvention in TEA BY THE SEA, her writing doesn't hit you over the head with them. And, the cat and mouse game where Plum tries to track down Lenworth's location will also keep you riveted!
Although Hemans tackles some heavy topics like parental rejection, individual agency, and identity reinvention in TEA BY THE SEA, her writing doesn't hit you over the head with them. And, the cat and mouse game where Plum tries to track down Lenworth's location will also keep you riveted!
October 12, 2020
Seventeen-year old Plum has been sent to a boarding school in Jamaica by her parents in order to keep her in line. She misses Brooklyn desperately and feels that her parents have abandoned her. To make matters worse, she falls in love with her 25-year old math tutor, Lenworth, and becomes pregnant. After delivering the baby, she wakes up to find Lenworth and the newborn gone, without explanation. She ends up returning to Brooklyn but never forgets her missing child. She tries to carry on with her life, eventually marrying and having two more daughters, but her search for her baby consumes her life for the next seventeen years and she never gives up the hope of finding her and confronting Lenworth.
When Lenworth walked out of the hospital that day with his newborn daughter, whom he names Opal, he thinks he’s saving Plum’s future and allowing her to fulfil her potential without the burden of a child. He spends the next seventeen years leading a life of lies in order to cover up what he’s done. His relationship with Opal is fraught with tension because as she grows up, her resemblance to her mother becomes a constant reminder to him of what he’s done.
Tea by the Sea is a heartbreaking story of the strength of a mother’s love, hope, determination, and how secrets and best intentions can tear relationships and families apart. Donna Hemans’ writing is lovely and very descriptive; you feel like you’re right there in Jamaica with Plum and Lenworth.
4.5 stars rounded up
When Lenworth walked out of the hospital that day with his newborn daughter, whom he names Opal, he thinks he’s saving Plum’s future and allowing her to fulfil her potential without the burden of a child. He spends the next seventeen years leading a life of lies in order to cover up what he’s done. His relationship with Opal is fraught with tension because as she grows up, her resemblance to her mother becomes a constant reminder to him of what he’s done.
Tea by the Sea is a heartbreaking story of the strength of a mother’s love, hope, determination, and how secrets and best intentions can tear relationships and families apart. Donna Hemans’ writing is lovely and very descriptive; you feel like you’re right there in Jamaica with Plum and Lenworth.
4.5 stars rounded up
August 17, 2020
I NEED A SECOND PART!!!!
From the moment I opened the book, I was appalled at the lengths that everybody had one mission: make Plum Valentine's life miserable.
Her parents refused to actually see her for her and deemed her a disappointment when they felt that they had to put in extra work to actually be there for her. Although you might not agree with some of Plum's decisions, the main issue is she never received proper love and Lenworth definitely used her young adolescence as a way to attack her vulnerability and innocence.
Honestly, the three characters I detested were Plum's parents, Lenworth (at the top of the list), and Lenworth's wife, Pauline. As a woman, you would think she would do anything to rectify the situation. but she enabled Lenworth's entanglement of lies and she needs to go down with him. I believe the story displays how when you're the only one fighting for your life and with the tainted history of betrayal, she felt she couldn't trust her own husband with her true story or aiding her efforts. I cannot blame her for her decisions and I'm seeking justice for her myself.
From the moment I opened the book, I was appalled at the lengths that everybody had one mission: make Plum Valentine's life miserable.
Her parents refused to actually see her for her and deemed her a disappointment when they felt that they had to put in extra work to actually be there for her. Although you might not agree with some of Plum's decisions, the main issue is she never received proper love and Lenworth definitely used her young adolescence as a way to attack her vulnerability and innocence.
Honestly, the three characters I detested were Plum's parents, Lenworth (at the top of the list), and Lenworth's wife, Pauline. As a woman, you would think she would do anything to rectify the situation. but she enabled Lenworth's entanglement of lies and she needs to go down with him. I believe the story displays how when you're the only one fighting for your life and with the tainted history of betrayal, she felt she couldn't trust her own husband with her true story or aiding her efforts. I cannot blame her for her decisions and I'm seeking justice for her myself.
August 13, 2022
I liked the setting and the imagery but too much of a downer for me.
January 27, 2020
This novel takes the reader to deeply personal and universal places: a mother whose infant has been stolen. How can she continue? Set in Jamaica and Brooklyn, the story gets under the skin of the characters in a splendid and powerful way, and propels the reader along for the ride. Strongly recommended.
July 5, 2020
Unbearable losses, and the fight to get what’s yours back (Jamaica and Brooklyn, 1990s – 2010s): Tea by the Sea might be one of your favorite feminist novels of the year. Surely Jamaican-born Plum Valentine, the protagonist, will capture your heart as she’s “focused on mattering, on not being a person so easily discarded and left behind.”
Plum has been a victim of not having “agency” in her life. Lacking control and the freedom to choose her destiny, others made dreadful decisions that predetermined her life, leaving her behind. Her childhood was marked by strict parental control that ripped her away from her beloved Jamaican homeland to an immigrant’s life in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, where she did not belong. Twice they re-shuffled her from Jamaica to Brooklyn and back, abandoning her again and again. At seventeen, she suffered “the most greatest loss” of all: the day after she gave birth to a baby girl in a Jamaican hospital her daughter was carried away by the father, Lenworth, without letting anyone know their whereabouts. Plum had planned to name her Marissa, which in Spanish means the sea and signified the “promise and freedom” she never had.
For seventeen years – “6,205 days give or take a few for leap years” to be exact – she searched from Jamaica and Brooklyn for the daughter whose father told her she was “left behind” by her mother, telling everyone else she’d died. For Plum, that’s seventeen years of “calcified grief”; for her daughter, you’ll wonder what she believed.
Debut author Donna Hemans has written a stirring story that deserves the important Jamaican literary prize she was awarded by the Jamaican Writers Society. It also deserves national attention, tackling the complexity of human emotions, raising a fundamental question about what matters most to live a good life, asking moral questions about motivations and terribly misguided decisions. The eloquent, atmospheric prose also reveals little-known black history at an historical time when America is demanding its racist history be better known. While this is not a novel focused on social justice, it is embedded in its laser-focus on seeking justice for one mother and her daughter.
The Una Marson Award honors a leading Jamaican activist and poet who advocated for Caribbean literature. Another Jamaican poet and activist, apparently legendary, Louise Bennett-Coverly, was celebrated last year on her 100th birthday with a petition (it failed) to recognize a second official language in Jamaica, called “patois,” besides English. She’s credited with raising the dialogue of the Jamaica folk to an art level. Plum’s story is activism in a deeply personal way.
The use of patois is a feature of Jamaican literature. Hemans’ writing mingles the two ways of speaking artfully. English is the more common, but the local dialect is authentically expressed, flavored with dialogue like this: “One day him come back wid hur,” and “Mi dear, you nuh have to ask.”
Judge Tea by the Sea by its exquisite cover! Which establishes Plum’s love of the sparking blue waters of the Caribbean Sea and the powdery white sandy beaches encircling Jamaica, a large tropical island south of Cuba, part of the West Indies that become a country when it achieved independence from British colonial rule in 1962.
Plum’s major obstacle to finding her daughter is finding the father who kidnapped her, proving incredibly difficult as he reinvents his life twice, and never looked back. He named their daughter Opal, because her almond-shaped, topaz eyes reminded him of a jewel. Eyes that were also a constant reminder of Plum as they were the same. So was their skin, darker than his.
Will Plum find her daughter? That’s the central question propelling gripping storytelling.
The freeing sea is symbolic of the searching plot to set oneself free, by taking a stand for what’s morally right, despite the consequences. When the novel ends, Plum is thirty-four and while her emotional life feels “suspended” and “fossilized” she has moved on. The floating sea also personifies the “unending” push and pull of Plum’s changing life.
The prose ebbs and flows too. Offsetting the almost indescribable pain of unrelenting grief, which the author has found heart-stopping words for, are lovely descriptions of Jamaica’s colorful setting – “Spanish style” and “plantation” architectural types, abundance and diversity of flowers and trees, spicy cuisine. Yet the beauty is pierced by Plum’s raw pain, and the island’s racial history. So the prose goes from feeling like a calming summer breeze to intense yearning and suspenseful searching that never fades.
Interestingly, the timeline also floats, moving back and forth without being specified until the end, seeming to emphasize the timelessness of a mother’s grief and the longing for the mother a girl never knew. Except for one date, the only date that really matters: September 16th when Marissa/Opal was born.
The geography spans Jamaica from its western coast to east, but is mostly set in small, rural towns on the northwestern side, near Montego and Discovery Bays.
Montego Bay: https://www.flickr.com/photos/galfred...
On Discovery Bay a plaque commemorates Columbus’ sailing into the bay in 1494: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
The Columbus history is important for another reason: “the Tainos, a group long extinct from Jamaica, decimated by hard labor and the diseases brought to the island by Christopher Columbus and the cohort of explorers, diseases for which their bodies had built no immunity.” Once we may have dismissed epic diseases as ancient history, but today we know better, living in a moment when history feels like it’s repeating itself. Erasing Jamaica’s indigenous people also reminds us of America’s shameful history towards Native Americans. Jamaica is also another country with a legacy of slave history.
The varied settings let us imagine Jamaica, and take us through the different places Plum lived during her formative and later years; also to an abandoned house Lenworth first took Opal to. He grew up in a poor, rural village near the eastern side; a built-up Kingston on the eastern coast is one of the areas Plum searched.
Part I is aptly titled Unforgettable, and Forgettable. Plum’s loss is unforgettable since she’s been tossed aside so many times she feels forgettable. Except to Opal, who senses her mother’s gone as an infant unable to be soothed by one of two substitute mothers, and then at four when she expresses the missing piece of herself asking: “How come I don’t have a mother?”
While you want to abhor Lenworth, your feelings about him are not black-or-white. Hemans has created a nuanced character whose motives and childhood influences give us insight. Still, the tragedy that ensued was a doomed decision he regretted the rest of his life, but didn’t do anything about except do everything in his power to hide by carefully controlling his life. Power, or the lack of it, is a driving force and theme.
Of course Lenworth knows he committed a crime, actually two. First when he was twenty-three and and Plum got pregnant under-age at sixteen. He was also her tutor at her boarding school (a throwback to British rule) so he’d crossed the line professionally as well. The second crime, the kidnapping. The tragedy is seen on multiple fronts. Plum and Opal are not the only ones who’ve suffered, he has too. But our sympathies are always with Plum and Opal, who we know little about, as this is Plum’s story, told through Plum’s mournful soul.
A brutally emotional story, yet it’s painted with beauty, resilience, and so much determination it makes Plum the unforgettable person she fought so hard to be.
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
Plum has been a victim of not having “agency” in her life. Lacking control and the freedom to choose her destiny, others made dreadful decisions that predetermined her life, leaving her behind. Her childhood was marked by strict parental control that ripped her away from her beloved Jamaican homeland to an immigrant’s life in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, where she did not belong. Twice they re-shuffled her from Jamaica to Brooklyn and back, abandoning her again and again. At seventeen, she suffered “the most greatest loss” of all: the day after she gave birth to a baby girl in a Jamaican hospital her daughter was carried away by the father, Lenworth, without letting anyone know their whereabouts. Plum had planned to name her Marissa, which in Spanish means the sea and signified the “promise and freedom” she never had.
For seventeen years – “6,205 days give or take a few for leap years” to be exact – she searched from Jamaica and Brooklyn for the daughter whose father told her she was “left behind” by her mother, telling everyone else she’d died. For Plum, that’s seventeen years of “calcified grief”; for her daughter, you’ll wonder what she believed.
Debut author Donna Hemans has written a stirring story that deserves the important Jamaican literary prize she was awarded by the Jamaican Writers Society. It also deserves national attention, tackling the complexity of human emotions, raising a fundamental question about what matters most to live a good life, asking moral questions about motivations and terribly misguided decisions. The eloquent, atmospheric prose also reveals little-known black history at an historical time when America is demanding its racist history be better known. While this is not a novel focused on social justice, it is embedded in its laser-focus on seeking justice for one mother and her daughter.
The Una Marson Award honors a leading Jamaican activist and poet who advocated for Caribbean literature. Another Jamaican poet and activist, apparently legendary, Louise Bennett-Coverly, was celebrated last year on her 100th birthday with a petition (it failed) to recognize a second official language in Jamaica, called “patois,” besides English. She’s credited with raising the dialogue of the Jamaica folk to an art level. Plum’s story is activism in a deeply personal way.
The use of patois is a feature of Jamaican literature. Hemans’ writing mingles the two ways of speaking artfully. English is the more common, but the local dialect is authentically expressed, flavored with dialogue like this: “One day him come back wid hur,” and “Mi dear, you nuh have to ask.”
Judge Tea by the Sea by its exquisite cover! Which establishes Plum’s love of the sparking blue waters of the Caribbean Sea and the powdery white sandy beaches encircling Jamaica, a large tropical island south of Cuba, part of the West Indies that become a country when it achieved independence from British colonial rule in 1962.
Plum’s major obstacle to finding her daughter is finding the father who kidnapped her, proving incredibly difficult as he reinvents his life twice, and never looked back. He named their daughter Opal, because her almond-shaped, topaz eyes reminded him of a jewel. Eyes that were also a constant reminder of Plum as they were the same. So was their skin, darker than his.
Will Plum find her daughter? That’s the central question propelling gripping storytelling.
The freeing sea is symbolic of the searching plot to set oneself free, by taking a stand for what’s morally right, despite the consequences. When the novel ends, Plum is thirty-four and while her emotional life feels “suspended” and “fossilized” she has moved on. The floating sea also personifies the “unending” push and pull of Plum’s changing life.
The prose ebbs and flows too. Offsetting the almost indescribable pain of unrelenting grief, which the author has found heart-stopping words for, are lovely descriptions of Jamaica’s colorful setting – “Spanish style” and “plantation” architectural types, abundance and diversity of flowers and trees, spicy cuisine. Yet the beauty is pierced by Plum’s raw pain, and the island’s racial history. So the prose goes from feeling like a calming summer breeze to intense yearning and suspenseful searching that never fades.
Interestingly, the timeline also floats, moving back and forth without being specified until the end, seeming to emphasize the timelessness of a mother’s grief and the longing for the mother a girl never knew. Except for one date, the only date that really matters: September 16th when Marissa/Opal was born.
The geography spans Jamaica from its western coast to east, but is mostly set in small, rural towns on the northwestern side, near Montego and Discovery Bays.
Montego Bay: https://www.flickr.com/photos/galfred...
On Discovery Bay a plaque commemorates Columbus’ sailing into the bay in 1494: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
The Columbus history is important for another reason: “the Tainos, a group long extinct from Jamaica, decimated by hard labor and the diseases brought to the island by Christopher Columbus and the cohort of explorers, diseases for which their bodies had built no immunity.” Once we may have dismissed epic diseases as ancient history, but today we know better, living in a moment when history feels like it’s repeating itself. Erasing Jamaica’s indigenous people also reminds us of America’s shameful history towards Native Americans. Jamaica is also another country with a legacy of slave history.
The varied settings let us imagine Jamaica, and take us through the different places Plum lived during her formative and later years; also to an abandoned house Lenworth first took Opal to. He grew up in a poor, rural village near the eastern side; a built-up Kingston on the eastern coast is one of the areas Plum searched.
Part I is aptly titled Unforgettable, and Forgettable. Plum’s loss is unforgettable since she’s been tossed aside so many times she feels forgettable. Except to Opal, who senses her mother’s gone as an infant unable to be soothed by one of two substitute mothers, and then at four when she expresses the missing piece of herself asking: “How come I don’t have a mother?”
While you want to abhor Lenworth, your feelings about him are not black-or-white. Hemans has created a nuanced character whose motives and childhood influences give us insight. Still, the tragedy that ensued was a doomed decision he regretted the rest of his life, but didn’t do anything about except do everything in his power to hide by carefully controlling his life. Power, or the lack of it, is a driving force and theme.
Of course Lenworth knows he committed a crime, actually two. First when he was twenty-three and and Plum got pregnant under-age at sixteen. He was also her tutor at her boarding school (a throwback to British rule) so he’d crossed the line professionally as well. The second crime, the kidnapping. The tragedy is seen on multiple fronts. Plum and Opal are not the only ones who’ve suffered, he has too. But our sympathies are always with Plum and Opal, who we know little about, as this is Plum’s story, told through Plum’s mournful soul.
A brutally emotional story, yet it’s painted with beauty, resilience, and so much determination it makes Plum the unforgettable person she fought so hard to be.
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
July 3, 2020
4.5 stars
Tell me know... wah you fi do if mi push out wah baby fi di cayless puppa tek it an go weh.
Lenworth has shot to the top of my Literary Men I Hate list.
This book is so beautiful and I really enjoyed reading this tender and heart-breaking (yet still fun) story. Thank the Lorde for the few literary awards we have here in Jamaica cause we have some amazing writers here.
Tell me know... wah you fi do if mi push out wah baby fi di cayless puppa tek it an go weh.
Lenworth has shot to the top of my Literary Men I Hate list.
This book is so beautiful and I really enjoyed reading this tender and heart-breaking (yet still fun) story. Thank the Lorde for the few literary awards we have here in Jamaica cause we have some amazing writers here.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 3, 2021
"She understood now that sometimes that desire to be seen as successful, to matter, was all that a person had or could control...She focused on mattering, on not being a person so easily distracted and left behind"
Synopsis (GR):
A 17 yearold taken from her mother at birth, an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see, a mother weary of searching for her lost child: Tea by the Sea is their story-that of a family uniting and unraveling. To find the daughter taken from her, Plum Valentine must find the child's father who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her. From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, Tea by the Sea traces Plum's circuitous route to find her daughter and how Plum's and the priest's love came apart.
This is a wonderfully written tale of family secrets, forbidden love, abandonment but most of all a search for agency & belonging. The novel is very well written and it was a character driven story. Plum is a fantastic protagonist and her resilience and search for belonging just captures your heart from the very first moment she is introduced. Lenworth, although his actions are horrible and set the events into motion, is a character that you will love to hate for many years to come. Opal, their daughter has grown up feeling like something is missing in her life and doesn't quite understand why she doesn't feel seen by her father, even though he has raised her. All the characters were beautifully written & perfectly capture what is like to be Caribbean and be caught in between two worlds, always longing for home.
This novel had so much depth. The author's prose & use of metaphors throughout the tale brings the story to life. The places described were so vivid, I could imagine travelling back and forth between Jamaica and Brooklyn. I felt the ending was perfect & the last line left me speechless.
Bookdragon rates it 5
Synopsis (GR):
A 17 yearold taken from her mother at birth, an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see, a mother weary of searching for her lost child: Tea by the Sea is their story-that of a family uniting and unraveling. To find the daughter taken from her, Plum Valentine must find the child's father who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her. From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, Tea by the Sea traces Plum's circuitous route to find her daughter and how Plum's and the priest's love came apart.
This is a wonderfully written tale of family secrets, forbidden love, abandonment but most of all a search for agency & belonging. The novel is very well written and it was a character driven story. Plum is a fantastic protagonist and her resilience and search for belonging just captures your heart from the very first moment she is introduced. Lenworth, although his actions are horrible and set the events into motion, is a character that you will love to hate for many years to come. Opal, their daughter has grown up feeling like something is missing in her life and doesn't quite understand why she doesn't feel seen by her father, even though he has raised her. All the characters were beautifully written & perfectly capture what is like to be Caribbean and be caught in between two worlds, always longing for home.
This novel had so much depth. The author's prose & use of metaphors throughout the tale brings the story to life. The places described were so vivid, I could imagine travelling back and forth between Jamaica and Brooklyn. I felt the ending was perfect & the last line left me speechless.
Bookdragon rates it 5
March 18, 2021
This is really a story about a young mother whose baby was taken from her at birth and her search to find this child while also finding herself. This book was heartbreaking but also inspiring. The emotions shown on the page were so real, and the idea that a baby could be snatched at childbirth was horrifying. The scene where Plum comes back to the room and realizes her baby is gone was apoplectic. The baby's gone. The desperation and how Plum looked everywhere for the baby, that feeling of hopelessness and despair, was honest and raw. It's the loss of a parent not having a child, but it's also about the loss of a child not having a parent.
At one point, the author writes, "She didn't care about other people's stories or past lives. She had her own storied past and present. And now she had a firm conviction that despite her parents' claim, the fairytale endings, the scripted Hollywood kind, weren’t really available to her. Hollywood's movies had told her that fairytale endings weren’t available to a dark-skinned girl, and an immigrant at that."
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/don...
At one point, the author writes, "She didn't care about other people's stories or past lives. She had her own storied past and present. And now she had a firm conviction that despite her parents' claim, the fairytale endings, the scripted Hollywood kind, weren’t really available to her. Hollywood's movies had told her that fairytale endings weren’t available to a dark-skinned girl, and an immigrant at that."
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/don...
June 14, 2020
A difficult story told in a fluid, graceful style. With the point of view moving back and forth between the main characters, the author gives us an interesting look into the mindset of a man who takes his daughter away from her mother and alternates between admitting it was wrong and comforting himself with self-justifications.
June 6, 2023
This isn’t a thriller, but it kept me riveted.
Plum, the protagonist, is just seventeen, and in a relationship with Lenworth, a 25-year old man who used to be her tutor. Although she grew up in Brooklyn, she has been going to school in Jamaica, where her island-born parents sent her to insure she didn’t pick up any disrespectful teenage behavior. They weren’t happy when she got pregnant, and basically cut her off.
After an arduous labor, she wakes up and finds that Lenworth has disappeared, with no explanation, and taken the baby. The novel flips between Plum’s point of view and Lenworth’s, over the next seventeen years. She searches all over the island, hiring a private detective, and although she finds clues, she doesn’t find Lenworth or her daughter.
This is the second betrayal in Plum’s young life. When she was sent back to Jamaica, her parents didn’t tell her the plan, and she thought she was just there on vacation until they went back to Brooklyn without her. Now Lenworth has also abandoned her, and worse, her baby has been stolen before she could even give her a name.
Eventually, Plum finds a way to get back to Brooklyn, reconciles with her parents, and makes a new life for herself there. She goes back to school and gets a steady job in a lab. Every once in a while, the private detective comes up with a new clue, and she flies back to Jamaica. But after one particularly hopeful clue ends in a dead end, she agrees to marry Alan, the man who has loved her for many years. Meanwhile, Lenworth keeps his past life a secret, with some effort, and marries a woman named Pauline, who isn’t particularly maternal. He names his daughter Opal, and she grows up as a moody child, never feeling connected to her family.
Lenworth is an interesting character. He’s shown as having a great deal of anxiety and many regrets, but we don’t realize what a coward he is until the end of the novel. Whenever he is threatened with discovery, he takes off, basically giving himself a new identity. After years as a carpenter, he decides to enter a seminary and moves to Maryland. Eventually he finds himself leading a church in Brooklyn, and at the end of the novel, Plum happens upon him and Opal, who is now 17. The ending is shocking and dramatic, and I couldn’t put the book down until I finished it.
A quote:
< In the end it came down to a single thing, not love or respect or gratitude. Just the fact of where Opal belonged and to whom. The car started rolling. Plum looked back again, turning only her neck at first, then shifting to look fully behind at Opal dodging the police officer, running onto the sidewalk and into the street, chasing the car. The driver stopped, waited for another officer to move a car barricading the road. Opal was nearly there, had very nearly caught up to the car when it moved again. Undefeated, undaunted, Opal ran toward Plum and away from him, her arms pumping steadily, oblivious of the police officers watching and waiting for her to give up. The truth wouldn’t wait. The truth was there, behind the car, running after it, not yet catching up, but moving forward at a measured and steady pace. Plum leaned her head back and waited for what was hers. >
Plum, the protagonist, is just seventeen, and in a relationship with Lenworth, a 25-year old man who used to be her tutor. Although she grew up in Brooklyn, she has been going to school in Jamaica, where her island-born parents sent her to insure she didn’t pick up any disrespectful teenage behavior. They weren’t happy when she got pregnant, and basically cut her off.
After an arduous labor, she wakes up and finds that Lenworth has disappeared, with no explanation, and taken the baby. The novel flips between Plum’s point of view and Lenworth’s, over the next seventeen years. She searches all over the island, hiring a private detective, and although she finds clues, she doesn’t find Lenworth or her daughter.
This is the second betrayal in Plum’s young life. When she was sent back to Jamaica, her parents didn’t tell her the plan, and she thought she was just there on vacation until they went back to Brooklyn without her. Now Lenworth has also abandoned her, and worse, her baby has been stolen before she could even give her a name.
Eventually, Plum finds a way to get back to Brooklyn, reconciles with her parents, and makes a new life for herself there. She goes back to school and gets a steady job in a lab. Every once in a while, the private detective comes up with a new clue, and she flies back to Jamaica. But after one particularly hopeful clue ends in a dead end, she agrees to marry Alan, the man who has loved her for many years. Meanwhile, Lenworth keeps his past life a secret, with some effort, and marries a woman named Pauline, who isn’t particularly maternal. He names his daughter Opal, and she grows up as a moody child, never feeling connected to her family.
Lenworth is an interesting character. He’s shown as having a great deal of anxiety and many regrets, but we don’t realize what a coward he is until the end of the novel. Whenever he is threatened with discovery, he takes off, basically giving himself a new identity. After years as a carpenter, he decides to enter a seminary and moves to Maryland. Eventually he finds himself leading a church in Brooklyn, and at the end of the novel, Plum happens upon him and Opal, who is now 17. The ending is shocking and dramatic, and I couldn’t put the book down until I finished it.
A quote:
< In the end it came down to a single thing, not love or respect or gratitude. Just the fact of where Opal belonged and to whom. The car started rolling. Plum looked back again, turning only her neck at first, then shifting to look fully behind at Opal dodging the police officer, running onto the sidewalk and into the street, chasing the car. The driver stopped, waited for another officer to move a car barricading the road. Opal was nearly there, had very nearly caught up to the car when it moved again. Undefeated, undaunted, Opal ran toward Plum and away from him, her arms pumping steadily, oblivious of the police officers watching and waiting for her to give up. The truth wouldn’t wait. The truth was there, behind the car, running after it, not yet catching up, but moving forward at a measured and steady pace. Plum leaned her head back and waited for what was hers. >
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 23, 2020
Donna Hemans’s beautiful novel Tea by the Sea is the story of love when the lovers are separated, of parenting when the children are not there, and the ache of abandonment when you find yourself a castaway in the world.
The poignant story about family takes place in Jamaica and the United States across several generations. This is not a tale of progress and improvement, however, but one where each new generation seems to repeat the mistakes of their parents, passing on injuries like heirlooms.
Men leave the island promising to send for their wives and families, but they never get around to it. The women wait at home, living their lives, but with a part of them permanently on hold.
Parents living in New York have a dreamy nostalgia about the old country, and send their children to school on the island to “save them” from the evils of the United States, or to prevent them from “flying away.” The parents seem to have forgotten why they left the island in the first place, and that danger does not recognize national borders. Most painfully, they fail to see how separation begets feelings of abandonment, and how sending away a child is more harmful than watching her fly away.
The metaphor of a castaway is appropriate for the island setting. There is a big difference in the book, however, between the romantic idea of the noun “castaway” — a person accidentally alone — and the verb “cast away,” meaning rejected and abandoned.
The main characters are Plum, a ripe young woman full of warmth and promise, and Lenworth, the man she loves. Plum is too young at first to see that Lenworth has the unfailing ability to convince himself he is doing the right thing every time he fails to do so.
Like his father before him, Lenworth leaves. He leaves his mother, and he leaves the mother of his child. He tries to be loyal to his daughter — the third generation of women in his life — but she never feels loved or even noticed by her father. The pattern repeats: one person leaves, one is left suffering from abandonment. Repeat.
Lenworth promises Plum “agency,” which he defines as “control over your life.” In a horrifying lie he tells himself, and fails to tell her, he gives Plum agency by taking away everything that matters to her.
When Lenworth’s lies finally are exposed, Hemans nicely describes how everything becomes clear to the rest of the family: “The truth settling like wet concrete into crevices, filling holes in the stories he’d told over the years, adding up to a truth so unbelievable that they believed.”
In the end, Plum does gain a measure of control over her life, by taking it back herself. The final, gripping scene leaves you worried her “agency” is being robbed from her yet again. I closed the book regretfully, not wanting the story to end, wondering anxiously about dear Plum, and hoping that Donna Hemans is writing the sequel.
(Peter Copeland is a journalist and author. His most recent book is Finding the News: Adventures of a Young Reporter)
The poignant story about family takes place in Jamaica and the United States across several generations. This is not a tale of progress and improvement, however, but one where each new generation seems to repeat the mistakes of their parents, passing on injuries like heirlooms.
Men leave the island promising to send for their wives and families, but they never get around to it. The women wait at home, living their lives, but with a part of them permanently on hold.
Parents living in New York have a dreamy nostalgia about the old country, and send their children to school on the island to “save them” from the evils of the United States, or to prevent them from “flying away.” The parents seem to have forgotten why they left the island in the first place, and that danger does not recognize national borders. Most painfully, they fail to see how separation begets feelings of abandonment, and how sending away a child is more harmful than watching her fly away.
The metaphor of a castaway is appropriate for the island setting. There is a big difference in the book, however, between the romantic idea of the noun “castaway” — a person accidentally alone — and the verb “cast away,” meaning rejected and abandoned.
The main characters are Plum, a ripe young woman full of warmth and promise, and Lenworth, the man she loves. Plum is too young at first to see that Lenworth has the unfailing ability to convince himself he is doing the right thing every time he fails to do so.
Like his father before him, Lenworth leaves. He leaves his mother, and he leaves the mother of his child. He tries to be loyal to his daughter — the third generation of women in his life — but she never feels loved or even noticed by her father. The pattern repeats: one person leaves, one is left suffering from abandonment. Repeat.
Lenworth promises Plum “agency,” which he defines as “control over your life.” In a horrifying lie he tells himself, and fails to tell her, he gives Plum agency by taking away everything that matters to her.
When Lenworth’s lies finally are exposed, Hemans nicely describes how everything becomes clear to the rest of the family: “The truth settling like wet concrete into crevices, filling holes in the stories he’d told over the years, adding up to a truth so unbelievable that they believed.”
In the end, Plum does gain a measure of control over her life, by taking it back herself. The final, gripping scene leaves you worried her “agency” is being robbed from her yet again. I closed the book regretfully, not wanting the story to end, wondering anxiously about dear Plum, and hoping that Donna Hemans is writing the sequel.
(Peter Copeland is a journalist and author. His most recent book is Finding the News: Adventures of a Young Reporter)
June 16, 2020
Full review at http://www.everydayiwritethebookblog....
Donna Hemans’ novel Tea By The Sea looks at how a single decision – 23 year-old Lemworth’s taking his newborn daughter Opal away from her 18 year-old mother Plum, hours after the baby’s birth – affects Lemworth’s and Plum’s lives – and ultimately Opal’s. While Lemworth’s actions were reprehensible, he had reasons for them, however misguided, and had to live with them in the decades to come. Plum’s subsequent search for Opal, meanwhile, became the single guiding factor for her life, affecting all of her future decisions and relationships.
Plum and Lemworth are memorable characters in heartbreaking situations. The pain Lemworth causes Plum is unforgivable, as is his subsequent treatment of Opal, a girl left without her mother. Plum’s loss of control so early in her life – taken away by Lemworth and her parents – leads to her intense need for control and agency in later years, alongside the acute and constant pain from the loss of her daughter. Hemans’ dual-tracked exploration of the ways in which both Lemworth and Plum try to move on from Lemworth’s actions in Jamaica was interesting, depicting the braiding of their subsequent paths as Plum searches for Lemworth and he consistently slips from her reach.
Hemans seamlessly shifts the action of Tea By The Sea between Jamaica, where Opal was born, and Plum’s hometown of Brooklyn, to which she returned after leaving Jamaica. I enjoyed both settings and found that the contrast between the two only highlighted Plum’s loss and the distance – emotional and physical – she felt from Opal.
Hemans also does a nice job building suspense throughout the novel. Will Plum find Opal, and when she confronts Lemworth, how will she make him pay for his actions seventeen years earlier? While the resolution wasn’t as clean or satisfying as I would have liked, I think that was intentional. There is no happy ending to this situation, given the pain suffered by so many people. The best we – and they – can hope for is a semblance of peace at the end and the possibility of rebuilding what was lost, albeit in a different form.
Donna Hemans’ novel Tea By The Sea looks at how a single decision – 23 year-old Lemworth’s taking his newborn daughter Opal away from her 18 year-old mother Plum, hours after the baby’s birth – affects Lemworth’s and Plum’s lives – and ultimately Opal’s. While Lemworth’s actions were reprehensible, he had reasons for them, however misguided, and had to live with them in the decades to come. Plum’s subsequent search for Opal, meanwhile, became the single guiding factor for her life, affecting all of her future decisions and relationships.
Plum and Lemworth are memorable characters in heartbreaking situations. The pain Lemworth causes Plum is unforgivable, as is his subsequent treatment of Opal, a girl left without her mother. Plum’s loss of control so early in her life – taken away by Lemworth and her parents – leads to her intense need for control and agency in later years, alongside the acute and constant pain from the loss of her daughter. Hemans’ dual-tracked exploration of the ways in which both Lemworth and Plum try to move on from Lemworth’s actions in Jamaica was interesting, depicting the braiding of their subsequent paths as Plum searches for Lemworth and he consistently slips from her reach.
Hemans seamlessly shifts the action of Tea By The Sea between Jamaica, where Opal was born, and Plum’s hometown of Brooklyn, to which she returned after leaving Jamaica. I enjoyed both settings and found that the contrast between the two only highlighted Plum’s loss and the distance – emotional and physical – she felt from Opal.
Hemans also does a nice job building suspense throughout the novel. Will Plum find Opal, and when she confronts Lemworth, how will she make him pay for his actions seventeen years earlier? While the resolution wasn’t as clean or satisfying as I would have liked, I think that was intentional. There is no happy ending to this situation, given the pain suffered by so many people. The best we – and they – can hope for is a semblance of peace at the end and the possibility of rebuilding what was lost, albeit in a different form.
July 17, 2020
Tea by the Sea begins with Lenworth, on foot, 'with the baby in the crook of one arm and an oversized bag' in the other.
☕
Who is Lenworth? Who is the baby?Where's the mother? This novel takes us on a journey to answer these questions. In fact, I read the book in one night because I just HAD to know. It emerges that Lenworth is a Jamaican teacher who had a sexual relationship with a seventeen-year-old student, Plum. When Plum gives birth, Lenworth takes their daughter and simply leaves the hospital, abandoning Plum. Lenworth is convinced that he's giving Plum a gift by 'saving her' from being a teen mother.
☕
This book follows Plum as she searches for her daughter and Lenworth, who becomes a priest of all things.
☕
And I was right there with Plum. I felt all her emotions in the immediate aftermath of her loss and then for years after. Plum's search for her daughter stretches from the potholed back roads of Jamaica all the way to Brooklyn. There's one moment when Plum sees a fat-cheeked baby on the train. The baby's mother has fallen asleep and Plum cannot BELIEVE the woman's negligence. Doesn't the mother know that someone can snatch her baby and flee?
☕
Plum tries to have a happy life but her days are punctuated with thoughts about her daughter. How can a mother move on from such a tragedy? Should she ever stop searching? And what about the man who claims to be in love with Plum? Will he abandon her like Lenworth did?
☕
If I could have asked for any changes, I would have liked more flashbacks to give me more of a picture of Lenworth and Plum's initial relationship. However, you may not feel the same way.
☕
This book raises so many issues about love, family, religion, loss and knowing when to hold on and when to let go. I will definitely look out for more books by the author!
☕
Who is Lenworth? Who is the baby?Where's the mother? This novel takes us on a journey to answer these questions. In fact, I read the book in one night because I just HAD to know. It emerges that Lenworth is a Jamaican teacher who had a sexual relationship with a seventeen-year-old student, Plum. When Plum gives birth, Lenworth takes their daughter and simply leaves the hospital, abandoning Plum. Lenworth is convinced that he's giving Plum a gift by 'saving her' from being a teen mother.
☕
This book follows Plum as she searches for her daughter and Lenworth, who becomes a priest of all things.
☕
And I was right there with Plum. I felt all her emotions in the immediate aftermath of her loss and then for years after. Plum's search for her daughter stretches from the potholed back roads of Jamaica all the way to Brooklyn. There's one moment when Plum sees a fat-cheeked baby on the train. The baby's mother has fallen asleep and Plum cannot BELIEVE the woman's negligence. Doesn't the mother know that someone can snatch her baby and flee?
☕
Plum tries to have a happy life but her days are punctuated with thoughts about her daughter. How can a mother move on from such a tragedy? Should she ever stop searching? And what about the man who claims to be in love with Plum? Will he abandon her like Lenworth did?
☕
If I could have asked for any changes, I would have liked more flashbacks to give me more of a picture of Lenworth and Plum's initial relationship. However, you may not feel the same way.
☕
This book raises so many issues about love, family, religion, loss and knowing when to hold on and when to let go. I will definitely look out for more books by the author!
June 24, 2020
I've been to Jamaica a dozen times and have fallen in love with the island's natural beauty, vibrant culture, and the warmth of the people. As a tourist, I can't claim to understand Jamaica as deeply as the residents but the times I've experienced the local color have been some of my most memorable. Tea by the Sea encompasses all of Jamaica's richness as it rolls out the intricate story of Plum Valentine. I loved every second of reading this novel--definitely one of my favorites of the year.
Plum, who has been sent by her parents to Jamaica to finish up her high school years, is only seventeen when she gets pregnant and has a baby with her former tutor, Lenworth. Though they had planned their life, Plum is devastated when Lenworth disappears from the hospital with the baby, leaving no trace. She eventually returns to Brooklyn to live with her parents, but spends much of her days searching and yearning for her lost daughter. Flying back to Jamaica at a moment's notice any time the private investigator she hired finds a lead, Plum is continually disappointed and frustrated. She goes on with her life without ever getting rid of the empty hole that has been left by her missing child.
Through Hemans's elegant writing, Plum's heartache is expressed with the perfect balance of pain and introspection. She writes about both Jamaica and Brooklyn with a keen eye for detail, making the settings come alive. Her style felt to me similar to the island itself--it was slow and easy, with blunt, insightful observations that didn't feel forced or overdone. Though at times Plum's sadness was unbearably difficult to read about, the way that she overcomes her terrible circumstances is inspiring.
I loved this book so much and I'll be eagerly awaiting Donna Hemans's next novel.
Plum, who has been sent by her parents to Jamaica to finish up her high school years, is only seventeen when she gets pregnant and has a baby with her former tutor, Lenworth. Though they had planned their life, Plum is devastated when Lenworth disappears from the hospital with the baby, leaving no trace. She eventually returns to Brooklyn to live with her parents, but spends much of her days searching and yearning for her lost daughter. Flying back to Jamaica at a moment's notice any time the private investigator she hired finds a lead, Plum is continually disappointed and frustrated. She goes on with her life without ever getting rid of the empty hole that has been left by her missing child.
Through Hemans's elegant writing, Plum's heartache is expressed with the perfect balance of pain and introspection. She writes about both Jamaica and Brooklyn with a keen eye for detail, making the settings come alive. Her style felt to me similar to the island itself--it was slow and easy, with blunt, insightful observations that didn't feel forced or overdone. Though at times Plum's sadness was unbearably difficult to read about, the way that she overcomes her terrible circumstances is inspiring.
I loved this book so much and I'll be eagerly awaiting Donna Hemans's next novel.
February 26, 2021
Tea by The Sea was my book pick for February’s WNBA book club. All the books I select come from the Great Group Reads list and there is always so many wonderful books to choice from. Author Donna Hemans writes so beautifully and descriptive, almost poetic at times. As a group we all really enjoyed the book and had a great discussion with lots of thought, theories, and questions for the author!
Plum’s parents sent her to live with family in Jamaica to hopefully stay out of trouble and prepare for college. When Plum learns she’s pregnant by her much older tutor her parents decide not to attend her graduation and even cancel her ticket home. Plum loves Lenworth and is excited to meet the baby she instinctually knows is a girl. After a long tiring labor the nurse takes Plum to the nursery to meet her daughter only to find out the baby and Lenworth are nowhere to be found. Lenworth has stolen her baby and Plum decides she will stop at nothing to find her.
Lenworth loves Plum but he wants better for her. She’s very bright and will excel in college, but not if she has to care for a newborn. He’s seen his own mother and sister have to sacrifice their dreams for their children and he doesn’t want Plum to have to make that choice so he went to the nursery and took the baby. He does worry how he’ll be able to care for her, and as Opal grows he will have to make up a story as to why she doesn’t have a mommy like all the other kids in school. Lenworth has many secrets he must keep and no one will ever truly know him as a person. Every year on Opals birthday the burden of what he has done gets heavier and heavier, but he’s in too deep to reveal what he’s done.
Tea by the Sea is a story about the power of a mothers love and her shear will to find what has been lost.
Plum’s parents sent her to live with family in Jamaica to hopefully stay out of trouble and prepare for college. When Plum learns she’s pregnant by her much older tutor her parents decide not to attend her graduation and even cancel her ticket home. Plum loves Lenworth and is excited to meet the baby she instinctually knows is a girl. After a long tiring labor the nurse takes Plum to the nursery to meet her daughter only to find out the baby and Lenworth are nowhere to be found. Lenworth has stolen her baby and Plum decides she will stop at nothing to find her.
Lenworth loves Plum but he wants better for her. She’s very bright and will excel in college, but not if she has to care for a newborn. He’s seen his own mother and sister have to sacrifice their dreams for their children and he doesn’t want Plum to have to make that choice so he went to the nursery and took the baby. He does worry how he’ll be able to care for her, and as Opal grows he will have to make up a story as to why she doesn’t have a mommy like all the other kids in school. Lenworth has many secrets he must keep and no one will ever truly know him as a person. Every year on Opals birthday the burden of what he has done gets heavier and heavier, but he’s in too deep to reveal what he’s done.
Tea by the Sea is a story about the power of a mothers love and her shear will to find what has been lost.
February 13, 2021
Loved everything about this book - the author knew exactly where she was going with this story and how she wanted to tell it. This let me, as the reader, be free to experience the story in my own way without the disruption of anything unnecessary in the writing. Everything in this book was necessary. I was completely immersed from the first page to the last. I won't say this is a story about the nature of all men and all women. But it is the very recognizable paths of many women and many men. It boils down to this - Lenworth is confused about himself and deals with it by trying to control others. He is narcissistic to the point of playing God. He is well aware that he is a fallible, inadequate human. But he does not think he should be. He cannot fathom that he could be. He won't let himself believe it. He won't humble himself to it - which is really about living in faith, living as one who accepts they are just an equal part in the universe, not above it. No - he constantly tries to manage the situation, frame the narrative, force the outcome. His awareness is only of himself. He does not really even see the others - Plum, Opal, or Pauline - as anything beyond pieces in HIS game of life. We all have that ego-centric nature. But Lenworth is especially afflicted. Hemans does a masterful job of telling this story. I am eager to read more of her writing!
March 8, 2020
This story of love and loss and abandonment carried me along with it. It offers just enough questions and answers as the story unfolds to keep the reader interested. It also offers some quiet and careful emotional insights. I think book club members might enjoy discussing the theme of agency, what it takes to be in control of one’s own life, the ways in which a person relinquishes power and the ways they claim it, as well as the forces beyond our control that shape our lives.
Another interesting topic was - having a checkered past and how a person can be led even farther astray by the guilt and shame OR how a person might look to work off that guilt and take charge of it with action and mindful intent.
This book uses the word AGENCY a lot, and it shines a light on what happens when someone tries to offer another person agency by taking AWAY choices they assume would only add pressure or strain. It also contends with the problem of male pride and the need for power and control- and how that pride and power can sometimes be stripped away by the persistence of one determined woman.
I loved this book.
Another interesting topic was - having a checkered past and how a person can be led even farther astray by the guilt and shame OR how a person might look to work off that guilt and take charge of it with action and mindful intent.
This book uses the word AGENCY a lot, and it shines a light on what happens when someone tries to offer another person agency by taking AWAY choices they assume would only add pressure or strain. It also contends with the problem of male pride and the need for power and control- and how that pride and power can sometimes be stripped away by the persistence of one determined woman.
I loved this book.
January 22, 2025
This was a very touching story about agency, abandonment, and how we can be affected by decisions that others make for us. It was interesting being inside of Lenworth’s head and seeing the kinds of narratives people can create about themselves to relieve their shame and absolve their guilt.
I was really invested in Plum from the start- a lonely teenager who has to deal with the unthinkable. I know some people aren’t a fan of the ending, and while it may have been rushed, I liked it.
3.5 stars because I didn’t fall in love with the book the way I was hoping. I really enjoyed the story though and the wild ride it took me through in the second half.
I was really invested in Plum from the start- a lonely teenager who has to deal with the unthinkable. I know some people aren’t a fan of the ending, and while it may have been rushed, I liked it.
3.5 stars because I didn’t fall in love with the book the way I was hoping. I really enjoyed the story though and the wild ride it took me through in the second half.
December 21, 2022
Thoughts
This book had me all over the place. At one point, I was like I am not even going to finish this book because it is not for me. But I am glad I finished because it was a roller coaster.
I am still not sure how I feel about it just because it had my emotions so high. I swear it had me so mad at the ending. For multiple reasons.
And unlike the blurbs say you do not root for every character. Not every character has a redeemable arc in this book, which is fine because not every person is a good person. But these blurbs had me thinking it was going to happen.
The ending is supposed to leave you with hope, I think, but if you know anything about the United States justice system, it doesn't leave you with much hope at all.
So these are my thoughts. As you can see, i have very conflicted. Should you read it? Yes, and then DM me!
This book had me all over the place. At one point, I was like I am not even going to finish this book because it is not for me. But I am glad I finished because it was a roller coaster.
I am still not sure how I feel about it just because it had my emotions so high. I swear it had me so mad at the ending. For multiple reasons.
And unlike the blurbs say you do not root for every character. Not every character has a redeemable arc in this book, which is fine because not every person is a good person. But these blurbs had me thinking it was going to happen.
The ending is supposed to leave you with hope, I think, but if you know anything about the United States justice system, it doesn't leave you with much hope at all.
So these are my thoughts. As you can see, i have very conflicted. Should you read it? Yes, and then DM me!
March 2, 2020
Tea By the Sea is at once a harrowing emotional journey and a gift for the senses. The story explores the brutal consequences that can occur when we try to "help" others by stripping them of agency -- as parents and as lovers. The characters in this book do care for each other, but the ways they show it reveal their own wounds and weaknesses at the expense of everyone involved. The novel forces us to think about the many ways we humans use "helping others" as a rationale for doing just the opposite and how thoughtlessly we often presume that we know best.
At the same time, Hemans writes from the senses, painting a lush and loving portrait of Jamaica and a raw, tough vision of Brooklyn. This is a book that will stay with you long after you reach the riveting conclusion.
At the same time, Hemans writes from the senses, painting a lush and loving portrait of Jamaica and a raw, tough vision of Brooklyn. This is a book that will stay with you long after you reach the riveting conclusion.
May 16, 2021
Lenworth was Plum's tutor. One day, when Plum couldn't focus on her studies, Lenworth put away the book and had a chat with her outdoors. He was fired for appearing to shirk his duties. But they did not stay apart. Plum gave birth to a daughter, and Lenworth immediately disappeared with the infant. Now, every year, on her daughter's birthday, Plum sits alone in the dark and visualizes "following a river to the place where it emerged from the earth, either as a gush or a trickle...pushing her body against the flow of water...her feet slipping and crashing against the rocks." This novel turns the story over and over, seen from different perspectives, remembered with more detail each time, like a pearl from the sea.
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