Calamity Lambkin has an out-of-wedlock daughter with whom she has a love-hate relationship. She is a grandmother to daughter Ifeoma’s son, and is amazed to find a toddler washed up on her stretch of Caribbean beach. Her birth name, Chastity, was the bane of her existence. Her active imagination, hot temper and magical power to find lost things have led to her adult name of Calamity. The finding of Agway (the name she gives the ocean’s gift of the toddler) is a message to her. But what is the message? Why is her magical power to find lost things, which has been dormant for decades, suddenly reappearing?

Nalo Hopkinson draws imaginatively from her own past (born in Jamaica, and lived in Guyana, Trinidad and Canada) to flesh out her characters. Calamity is delightful, because she represents the most realistic depiction of the mid-life woman, and Ms. Hopkinson makes it clear that middle age isn’t a stopping place, but a time for more growth, and a time for more creativity of the spirit. The wonderful mystery and magic in the mythical islands of the story pull us into the enchantment, and each character comes into the tale with a fascinating history (or her-story) and yet another glimpse of Calamity’s personality and character. Reading this book is a strong incentive to check out other titles Nalo Hopkinson has written; just for the chance to experience this "speculative fiction" that is her specialty. Mermaids, extinct Monk Seals, the dynamics of the ocean’s gifts, of lost-and-found, and the magic which can be found in each of us, if we just look hard enough.