An eloquent new Caribbean literary voice reveals the hidden trauma and fierce resilience of one Trinidadian family. Krystal A. Sital grew up idolizing her grandfather, a wealthy Hindu landowner in Trinidad. Yet when he fell into a coma in 2006, Sital's grandmother seemed shockingly indifferent to the possibility of his death. With her grandfather incapacitated, Sital at last learns the truth about the terror he inflicted for decades on her mother and grandmother, and three generations of women draw closer as they share long-held secrets about their family's past. As she explores the character of their tyrannical patriarch, Sital begins to see through the island's tranquil surface and vivid tropical landscape to the violence, suppression, and racial tensions that permeate the history of Trinidad. On the island's coffee plantations, in its growing cities, and in the family's new home in America, Secrets We Kept explores universal themes of love and cruelty, poverty and ambition, resilience and finding peace with the past.

Trinity -- Beginning -- Arya: 1972/1986 -- Witness -- Betrayal -- Beaten -- Exams -- Wooing -- Propose -- House -- Accident -- Interim -- Tradition -- Foundation -- Blows -- My grandfather: 2006/2008 -- Legacy -- Bond -- Unsettling -- Glint -- Rebecca: 1954/1980 -- Coffee -- Dougla -- Days -- Look -- My mother: 1997/2007 -- Cheated -- Realm -- Letters -- Crushed -- Weighted: 2007/2010 -- Memories -- Funer -- Eulogy -- Epilogue.