In Grenada in 1968, Dr Hilda Bynoe was appointed as one of the very first local governors in the Caribbean in the years just before formal independence, and the first woman, and black woman, to be appointed a governor anywhere in the Commonwealth. All previous governors had been white, male and British. The circumstances of her governorship in Grenada placed her at the heart of local, regional and international change, and later of conflict.

Based on interviews with Dame Hilda, Merle Collins explores the wider themes of ancestry, the small nation state and regional identity, and race in Dr Bynoe's conception of her role. It provides an insightful portrayal of not just an exceptional woman, but the emergence of a new Caribbean middle class, many of whom emigrated to the UK in the 1940s and 1950s, a journey rarely described from a female perspective.

Merle Collins was born in 1950 in Aruba. Her novels are Angel, set during the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, published in 1987 and re-issued by Peepal Tree in 2010, and The Colour of Forgetting (Virago, 1985). Her short-story collection The Ladies are Upstairs was published by Peepal Tree in 2011. She teaches Caribbean Literature at the University of Maryland.