Brown Girl in the Ring

Brown Girl in the Ring unfolds in a near-future Toronto whose downtown core has been abandoned by government and capital after an economic collapse, leaving the inner city to survive on farming, barter, and Afro-Caribbean folk practice. Ti-Jeanne is a young single mother living with her grandmother Mami Gros-Jeanne, a healer who works with the spirits. When the city's ruling crime boss needs a human heart for a wealthy politician's transplant, his enforcers target Ti-Jeanne's family, and she is forced to confront both the gang and the spirit-magic she has tried to refuse. Hopkinson weaves Caribbean mythology, Toronto geography, and dystopian survival into a debut that won the Locus Award for Best First Novel.