_Five hundred miles from mainland Colombia, grassroots resistance,
sloppy vacationers, and a muddy history of conquest converge for
Verónica, returning after living in Mexico City, ready to understand
herself and the place she came from. _San Andrés rises gently from the
Caribbean, part of Colombia but closer to Nicaragua, the largest island
in an archipelago claimed by the Spanish, colonized by the Puritans,
worked by slaves, and home to Arab traders, migrants from the mainland,
and the descendants of everyone who came before. For Victoria - whose
origins on the island go back generations, but whose identity is
contested by her accent, her skin colour, her years far away - the
sunburnt tourists, sewage blooms, sudden storms, and 'thinking rundowns'
where liberation is plotted and dinner served from a giant communal pot,
bring her into vivid, intimate contact with the island she thought she
knew, her own history, and the possibility for a real future for herself
and San Andrés.