Set in Montreal during the unsettled years of the Second World War, Sarsfield’s first novel depicts a community largely invisible to white society beyond the roles it has assigned them as maids, musicians, Pullman porters. The estimated “three hundred families of colour” are drawn from an extraordinary range of backgrounds: immigrants from the American South, the West Indies, and Africa, and Canadian-born descendants of loyalist slaves. Many are well educated. Some are light-skinned enough to “pass” as white. Sarsfield, whose varied work experience includes the Canadian foreign service, the UN, and the CBC, takes on a huge task in attempting to encompass this diversity and bring it to life.

At the book’s centre are Montreal-born Marian Willow, her daughters, Pippa and Effie, and their boarder, young Otis Thompson; the other characters are all connected in some way to this little family. Sarsfield illuminates one life, then another, against the backdrop of work, church, cricket clubs, Coloured Ladies’ clubs, and nightclubs. The young Oscar Peterson and writer Langston Hughes make cameo appearances. While the book is not directed specifically to adolescent readers, its subject matter will appeal to well-read teens interested in racial and historical themes, and Sarsfield provides an easy way in through many younger characters. Any violence is largely emotional and off-screen, and sexual references are discreet. Dialogue is lively, reflecting a rich mix of culture and accent. The theme is overriding: that white society’s perception of these people was limited to the colour of their skin. Sarsfield shows how the stereotype blighted lives and impoverished a culture, keeping many gifted individuals at its margins.

The cover and design make this a handsome book. The text, unfortunately, is less professional. Typos abound, and Sarsfield needed a firmer editorial hand. Her information-freighted narrative is overwhelmed with broad swathes of historical and sociological infilling, subplots, and minor characters. The point-of-view leaps about restlessly in a single scene. In one paragraph about the sizzling summer of 1942, “chafing” Europeans are “grilled” about hiding fugitives: the metaphor is not intentionally culinary. Despite such considerable problems, the book’s themes are important and Sarsfield brings them to our attention passionately.