Grenadian Idol

In October 1983, Felicity Alexander, an internationally celebrated opera singer, is under house arrest in St. George’s. Grenada is in the midst of a military coup and on the precipice of an American invasion. Felicity has lied about both her name and her Canadian citizenship to protect her identity. Unable to return home, she wonders who the Metropolitan Opera has found to replace her in what would have been her first performance of Verdi’s La Traviata and what kind of gown the wardrobe department would have created for her. She lies on her friend’s couch, staring at the ceiling fan, while “the soldiers outside the window shouted commands to each other and the flames from their bonfire cast flickering shadows into the room.” As she imagines taking the stage, “the crackling crescendo of the flames collided with the music playing in Felicity’s head.”

Felicity is the complicated and engaging heroine of Zilla Jones’s propulsive debut, a woman at the height of...