The Barrel - Julie Taylor Omole

She fed everyone else’s family. Now it’s time to feed her own soul. 

For thirty years, Miss Enid has lived by a singular ritual: double shifts at a Florida assisted living facility, frantic shopping runs, and the meticulous packing of the "Big Blue." In the Jamaican diaspora, the barrel is a lifeline, a steel and plastic promise of rice, corned beef, Christmas dresses, and hope shipped from the humid streets of Pembroke Pines to the lush hills of Portland, Jamaica. But for Enid, a professional caregiver who was never there to care for her own mother, the barrel has become something else entirely: a beautiful prison. 

When Hurricane Melissa devastates the island, Enid goes beyond the usual. She packs a generator at the bottom of her supersized barrel, a machine meant to bring light back to her sister’s darkened house. But at Myers Wharf in Kingston, the barrel vanishes. Cleared by a ghost. Stolen by the "tiefing men" who prey on the love of those abroad. Faced with a 500% markup at the local market and a shocking betrayal by her own cousin Cherry, Enid is forced onto a "Fix It Trip" that will cost her far more than money. 

Amidst the drums and frankincense of the Redemption Tabernacle, Enid begins to see the truth she has been avoiding for decades. She has spent a lifetime filling barrels for everyone else while starving her own spirit. The Barrel is a vivid, heartwarming story of sacrifice, sisterhood, and the moment a woman finally decides that the most important thing she can reclaim is herself.