Smallie

About the book

'Gorgeous and heartwrenching' CALEB AZUMAH NELSON, Sunday Times bestselling author of Small Worlds and Open Water

'What an electrifying and important debut. Every word is knife sharp, every emotion nuanced and every twist brilliantly turned . . . Should be at the top of everyone's 2026 Must Read list' RACHEL JOYCE, author of The Handmade God


Smallie adj. |smal·lie|
Definition: Caribbean (informal). Describing or relating a person from a small island; a small islander.

In 1961, nineteen-year-old Lucinda Brown travels to England in search of her son’s father, Clarence Braithwaite, who left Barbados to join the British army. But aboard the ship to Southampton she meets a man named Raldo who offers her a glimpse of a new life, a freer life. Bound by the memory of her son waiting at home, she chooses Clarence – realizing too late that war has made a stranger out of him.

Nearly fifty years later, Lucinda receives a letter from the Home Office that threatens to tear her world apart. Her children rally together to prove her legal arrival, and to do so they must track down an elusive man from her past, a man she wanted to love but instead lost, a man who now holds the key to her family’s future. Raldo . . .

An exhilarating and expansive tale of a family thrown into collision with the Windrush scandal, Smallie shows just how easily the past can spill into our lives, even when – especially when – we think we’ve closed the door on it.


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'An important novel that rises to the challenge of accountability and modern justice. McKenzie-Goddard writes with a commanding style, both measured and flamboyant' DIANA EVANS, author of the Women's Prize for Ficion shortlisted novel Ordinary People

‘A sharp, tender debut that traverses generations of one family’ YOMI SODE, award-winning author of Manorism

'Smallie . . . is both historical retrospective of the West Indian experience in Britain during the so-called ‘Windrush’ era, as well as heartwarming exploration of love of self, family, community and country. It is a brilliant and deeply moving debut' CHERIE JONES, author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House