Fire Rush

Jacqueline Crooks’ fascinating historical fiction book “Fire Rush” is set in the late 1970s and early 1980s in London, among the Jamaican diaspora. The protagonist of the tale is Yamaye, a young Jamaican-British woman who resides in the London neighborhood of Norwood. She longs for the freeing influence of music and retreats into the sounds of smoke-filled nights spent at the underground dub reggae club The Crypt.

A brighter future seemed imaginable until she met Moose, a soulful carpenter who shares her Jamaican ancestry. But violence upends her life, sending her on a wild voyage from Norwood to Bristol and ultimately Jamaica, where the past and present mix with disastrous results.