Here Comes the Sun

Here Comes the Sun is a novel by Jamaican author Nicole Dennis-Benn, published in 2016 by W.W. Norton & Company. The backdrop of a lavish resort in Montego Bay serves as a sharp contrast to the hardscrabble life of one of the resort's employees, Margot, who is willing to do whatever she must to ensure her younger sister, Thandi, can become a doctor and not follow in Margot's own footsteps. Margot and Thandi struggle to strike a balance between their identities and their dreams, their sense of home and the desires of their hearts. Here Comes the Sun won a Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for both the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize.

The book opens with a description of Margot's work at the Palm Star Resort and her commitment to it. Long after her coworkers go home, Margot stays on, and her dedication nets her several employee-of-the-month honors. But what she does after hours is far from what her boss, Alphonso, and colleagues might imagine. To her supplement her meager income and help her sister, Thandi, get a private school education, Margot has sex with people staying at the resort. This is not a new situation for Margot; from an early age, she learned to use her sexuality in order to survive. In a place where poverty runs rampant and where there are few opportunities for women, she has no qualms about doing what she has to do to see that Thandi has a brighter future than her own. Long ago, Margot mastered the art of divorcing herself emotionally from the reality of what she was doing; instead, she keeps her energies focused on her sister and her sister's success in life. Margot is just one member of a large prostitution ring that operates out of the resort.

However, Margot also understands that her ways of making ends meet will not be sustainable forever. She wants Thandi to go to medical school, become an accomplished doctor, then pay her back for all the hard work and sacrifices she has made. The girls' mother, Delores, who also works her fingers to the bone selling souvenirs, day in and day out, to tourists, also looks forward to the day Thandi becomes a doctor and saves the family from poverty. Further complicating matters is Margot's secret relationship with Verdene, a rich woman, with whom she longs to build a life, but homosexuality is not tolerated in most of Jamaican society.



Meanwhile, Thandi does not like the private school she attends, and she doesn't even want to be a doctor. A natural artist, drawing is her passion. Art class is her only solace as she also deals with the social pressures imposed on her by her classmates, who are all from wealthy families. To try to fit in, Thandi goes to Miss Ruby to have her skin bleached.

But these are not the only secrets Thandi keeps hidden. When she was just a child, she was raped by a local handyman named Clover. The scene still haunts her.

Back at the Palm Star, Margot assumes leadership of the prostitution ring. When Alphonso discovers what she has been doing after hours, he does not discourage her—just the opposite, in fact. He wants in on the deal, which Margot reluctantly agrees to. But when Alphonso turns her down for a management position at his new resort, Margot exacts revenge: She arranges for the new manager, a woman and a onetime Miss Universe, to be found in bed with another woman.



Thandi starts a relationship with a poor boy named Charles. During their first sexual experience together, she flashes back to her childhood rape and surprises herself by physically attacking Charles instead. For the first time, she reveals what happened to her.

Enraged, Charles storms off to find Clover to make him pay. Charles finds him at the construction site where Alphonso's new hotel is being built in the village. The altercation brings on a heart attack in Clover, causing him to die at the scene. Alphonso accuses Charles of murder and offers a reward for his capture. Charles's sister, Jullette, knows her brother is innocent, and she asks Thandi to sleep with Alphonso in exchange for dropping the charges. Thandi agrees but makes a startling revelation as she sets out to enact Jullette's plan.

Suddenly, the secrets of the sisters, deeply buried and studiously concealed, emerge into the bright Jamaican sunlight. Thandi discovers what Margot has been doing to make ends meet, and she learns that it was Margot who first advised Alphonso to offer a reward for Charles's apprehension. With this money, Margot can buy the life she wants for her sister and the life she wants for herself, with Verdene at her side.



However, how things end up is far from what Margot dreamed. In the end, she gets the money, the position, and the ritzy home—yet she's lost Thandi and Verdene in the process, forcing Margot to ask herself if all the sacrifices had really been worth it.