Esther Slade

J'ouvert Morning is a collection of poems that centers around the theme of love. At times, love is enticing and sensuous as in "Love You, I Do" and other times love strangles and kills as in "Fallen Sister". J'ouvert Morning also illustrates the infinite nature of love. Love has no beginning or no end. Time and space cannot contain love. In "Virgin Bells" the sound of bells tolling ushers in the longing of love lost long ago. Love births life and transcends death. I urge you to come experience J'ouvert Morning in its attempt to embody this complex emotion we know as love.

Set on the U.S. Island Territory of St. Croix and in the Eastern Unites States, Ayla's Paradise is the story of Ayla Walker Johnson -- a woman very much acquainted with adversity. The book explores how she overcomes that adversity and triumphs to provide a better life for her children. At age nine, Ayla's mother dies. She learns the hard way how to cope and become a nurturer, mother, and caretaker of her younger siblings. Later in life, she finds true love with the man she calls my beloved. He is the father of her three children. At times she is feisty and threatens to pluck out the eyes of the woman who would dare to take her husband. She feels insecure when she's rejected by a college sweetheart. But she is passionate when scorching her husband with the island fire of their erotic lovemaking.