The Hills of Hebron - Softcover

Wynter, Sylvia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9766372578 ISBN 13: 9789766372576

Publisher: Ian Randle Publishers, 2025

Synopsis

When Sister Rose, the beautiful young wife of Obadiah, the leader of the Church of New Believers, becomes pregnant, the hillside community of Hebron is thrown into a whirlwind of suspicion, disbelief and doubt. For Obadiah had taken a vow of chastity, not to lay with Rose for one year and one month. Obadiah protests his innocence to the congregation but the revelation of the pregnancy is the climax of the continuing power struggle between Obadiah and the jealous and ambitious Miss Gatha, Rose’s adoptive mother. Unrelenting and scathing in her attacks on Obadiah, Miss Gatha seeks to secure the succession of her son, the clubfooted Isaac, to his rightful place as leader of the New Believers, a position held by his father, the Prophet Moses who had led the New Believers into exile to build their Utopian community, the promised land in Hebron.

Written in the late 1950s on the cusp of Jamaica’s independence from Britain, The Hills of Hebron tells the story of a group of formerly enslaved Jamaicans as they attempt to create a new life and assert themselves against the colonial power. Strongly anti-colonial, the novel depicts Hebron as a Revivalist community embracing Afro-Caribbean religious practices and gives voice to the social forces of that period in Jamaican and Caribbean history. Based on the early twentieth century Bedwardism movement (a revivalist group led by Alexander Bedward), The Hills of Hebron, was one of the first attempts to present the lives of black Jamaicans not as colonial subjects, but as independent human beings.

About this title

About the Author

Sylvia Wynter was born in Cuba of Jamaican parents and grew up in Jamaica. She studied in Britain and Spain and in 1962, returned to Jamaica and joined the faculty of the University of the West Indies. One of the founders of the Jamaica Journal, Wynter wrote major essays on Jamaican culture, history and literature, as well as several plays. In 1974 she joined the faculty of the University of Califorina, San Diego and in 1977, Stanford University. She retired in 1944 and continues to reside in Northern California. The Hills of Hebron is her only novel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ian Randle Publishers
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9766372578
• ISBN 13: 9789766372576
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368