Elma Napier's love affair with Dominica, then a British colony, began in 1932 when she turned her back on London's high society to build a home in a remote coastal village on that most mysterious and seductive of all Caribbean islands. Black and White Sands is the memoir of her life there – of bohemian house-parties, war and death, smugglers and servants and, above all, of stories inspired by her political life as the only woman in a colonial parliament, her love for the island's turbulent landscapes and her curiosity about the lives and culture of its people.