Her mother's death and her father's madness leave G unloved and unwanted as a child. Her runaway marriage brings her children but not the fulfillment she yearns for. Many years later, a hurricane destroys her Jamaican country house where she now lives alone and she ends up-unwillingly-in a ritzy retirement home in the city, placed there by her well-to-do but distant daughter. Displaced and angry, G is forced to deal with her seemingly incompatible housemates and the pain of her past. Surprisingly, she ends up learning to love and laugh, to reconnect with the children she thought she had lost, and to finally gain a sense of belonging. Told in G's voice as she writes in her journal-a new-found solace from pain-Dancing Lessons is by turns sad, satirical, hilarious, and ultimately redemptive. A novel infused with the cadences and color of Jamaica yet connecting with anyone anywhere who engages with notions of family, love, loss, friendship, and belonging.