The Chosen Place, the Timeless People

The chosen place is Bourneville, a remote, devastated part of a Caribbean island; the timeless people are its inhabitants--black, poor, inextricably linked to their past enslavement. When the advance team for an ambitious American research project arrives, the tense, ambivalent relationships that evolve -- between natives and foreigners, blacks and whites, haves and have-nots -- keenly dramatize the vicissitudes of power.