Story Overview

This is the story of a search for the causes of a father's early death and the consequences for his children. A Jamaican immigrant falls from a window to his death, leaving a wife and four young children grieving and poor in a Chicago slum.

Family Secrets and Discoveries

Why? When he begins high school, the mother asks the youngest son to study the letters and papers his father left behind. He discovers that his father committed suicide but holds this secret for many years. He also uncovers the story of his father's twenty-year unsuccessful struggle to obtain a legacy his father left him in Jamaica.

Journey to Jamaica and Uncovering the Past

The son puts the files aside but retrieves them twenty years later and travels to Jamaica where he finds relatives and uncovers more family secrets. The story that unfolds reaches back to the middle of the nineteenth century and a Native American reservation.

Themes and Questions

The impact of each generation on the next holds the answer to the question Why?