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SYNOPSIS, A Different Hurricane by H. Nigel Thomas, available January 14, 2025

On the morning of Saturday September 9, 2017, while Hurricane Irma is devastating parts of the Caribbean, Gordon Wiley, aged 68, awakens shaken by the news of the murder of Jamaican gay activist Dexter Pottinger. In two days, it will be the first anniversary of his wife Maureen’s death, for which he is partly responsible. Their daughter Frida, who thinks that her father is the paragon of virtue, is arriving from Toronto that same evening so they can visit Maureen’s grave the following Monday.

Dexter Pottinger’s murder plunges a guilt-ridden Gordon into a prolonged reflection on his own gay life. He and Allan Bacchus, who grew up in nearby villages, were lovers until age 29. To circumvent St Vincent’s virulent homophobia, both men first dated women to pass themselves off as heterosexuals. But Maureen’s pregnancy forced Gordon into an unwanted marriage.

Three days after Frida’s birth, Gordon left for Montreal on a scholarship which bonded him to work for the St Vincent and Grenadines government for seven years. As a student in Montreal, at the beginning of the 1980s, Gordon experienced the fullness of gay life without the fears of social and legal persecution. But his irresistible desire to be a hands-on dad and his contract to return to St Vincent triumphed.

After repressing his homosexuality for over a decade, a change in his job required him to make frequent trips to Trinidad and gave him the opportunity to have a gay relationship there, from which he contracted AIDS and in turn infected Maureen.

Allan Bachus is an MD and married to Beth, Maureen’s closest friend and colleague, but has gay lovers. He helps Gordon and Maureen manage their illness in secret. Maureen has recorded the little that she knows in a journal, which, as per her instructions, should remain unread for 25 years after her death. It is all upended during the week that Frida is home.