Left at the Mango Tree

LEFT AT THE MANGO TREE is the story of Almondine Orlean. Almondine is white. Everyone else on the island of Oh is black. Things like that happen there. The moon plays tricks. The leaves sing. And one day the island itself summons home the grown-up Almondine to piece together her black-and-white past. She will reconstruct the efforts of her grandfather—a book-loving, magic-hating, Customs and Excise Officer named Raoul—to explain his new white grandbaby, a case of island magic if ever there was. As Raoul struggles to prove otherwise (for surely otherwise it has to be!), Oh’s pineapples begin to disappear. Acres without a trace, and Officer Raoul must find out how and why. With help and hindrance from his favorite novel and his three real-life chums, Raoul will risk his reputation, his sanity, and even his life, to solve not one island riddle but two—and to reveal, if he dare, the secrets hidden between the shady mango and the shiny moon.

Stephanie Siciarz was born in the US and is a graduate of Georgetown University and The Johns Hopkins University. She is a writer and translator and has worked for high-ranking officials in international, government, and academic institutions in the US and Europe. She currently resides in Ohio, where she is on the faculty at Kent State University. LEFT AT THE MANGO TREE, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize and was named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2013.