In the Jamaican vernacular a man wears a "jacket" if he has been given the paternity of a child that he has not fathered. A young police officer, his ex-girlfriend, and his current fiancée who is desperate for a child of her own, are caught up in a tug-of-war over an infant whose paternity is in doubt. But whether or not the child is actually his or not she is wanted both by him and his fiancee. The child's mother sees an opportunity whereby she can profit from the situation and decides to play hardball. Caught up in the drama is a grandmother who is devastated at the thought of losing her "grandchild" whom she is unable to "unlove" just because she may not be her legitimate granddaughter after all. Add to the mix the case of a battered wife, an arrogant and controlling husband and the retribution wreaked upon him, and you have the ingredients for murder, mystery and suspense. In a Jamaican setting, but could happen to anyone anywhere.
About the Author: Claudette Beckford-Brady is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. She was born in Old Harbour on Jamaica's south coast and spent the first seven years of her life in the country district of Gravel Hill, Bois Content before going to join her parents who had migrated to the United Kingdom, leaving her in the care of her great-grandmother. She learned to read at her great-grandmother's knee before ever starting school, and it was there she developed the love of reading which has stayed with her throughout her life. In England she was introduced to the lending library and was in readers' paradise at the number of books which were available to her. At some point it occurred to her that she could perhaps write as well as, if not better, than some of the authors she was reading and this inspired her to start writing short stories, but she did nothing with them. It was only when she returned to Jamaica from the UK in 1990 that she started writing in earnest. She began entering her stories in literary competitions and won a number of prizes and awards. Encouraged by this she decided to try her hand at a full length novel and in 2007 her debut novel Sweet Home Jamaica was published in the UK by Pegasus Elliot McKenzie. She followed up with the sequel, The Missing Years in 2009 and her third novel Return to Fidelity a couple of years later. In 2014 she self-published a collection of her award-winning short stories called Yaard and Abroad, set in Jamaica and the UK and in 2015 she published her first YA novel, The Dixons. All of Beckford-Brady's stories are set predominantly in her birth town of Old Harbour and its environs, as well as in South London where she lived for many years, but she also takes her readers to many other places on her beautiful island of Jamaica.