Intense Emotion by Orville Hutchinson

Intense Emotion by Orville Hutchinson

Orville Hutchinson remembers when he was a frightened nine-year-old Kingston boy sobbing with anguished loneliness at night. He remembers the ongoing war between his separated parents and the sting of his father's leather belt across his back. And he remembers his despair when his parents abandoned him for five years.

Taken by his father to visit relatives in the country, Orville-known as Dane to his family-discovered he was to be left in the care of his grandfather. Adrift in a world he knew nothing about, Dane had to quickly adapt to a new way of life, where he was expected to perform unfamiliar chores as ably as his bulkier, stronger cousins-or risk a beating.

Intense Emotion is Hutchinson's dramatic recollection of five years that radically changed his life, including his pain and fear when he realized his parents had forsaken him and his difficulty adapting to life in the Jamaican countryside. From the duppy (ghost) in the banana farm to the beating he received for destroying his uncle's potato plants, Hutchinson brings to life the trials of a young city boy attempting to endure in an alien, rough-and-ready rural environment-an inspiring message of hope and survival.