Bitter Chocolate

Lesley Lokko

Laure, seventeen, beautiful and already abandoned twice in her young life. Once by the glamorous mother she can barely remember, a woman who brought shame on the St Lazâre family name and fled to America; and then again by a handsome soldier who left her pregnant and alone, facing the wrath of her grandmother.

Amelie, caught in a world where she's neither servant or mistress, trapped between the St Lazâre family she's always worked for and the simmering hostility of a country on the verge of meltdown. With a past she knows nothing about and no family of her own, she yearns to find a place that can be home.

Melanie, the rock star's daughter who has everything money can buy except the love she craves. A daddy's girl caught in a whirl of damaging relationships, testing those closest to her. In one man, she sees the chance to change her life for ever, but at what price?

Three girls in search of a missing piece of their lives; three girls who will change their worlds to find it. In a story that begins in the relentless heat of a Haitian summer and sweeps through the luxury of America's elite to the colourful chaos of East End London, BITTER CHOCOLATE is a glorious tale of the quest for love, marriage and finding a place to belong.