My name is Alma: A Country Girl

Alma grows up on a little island in the Caribbean. "My world is tiny," she says. "I had never even been to 'Town' as everyone called the capital which was only 20 miles away." She longs to escape from the life her parents experience - digging the earth, planting vegetables, a life of skimping and scraping. It seems only a dream and then she wins a scholarship to the secondary school in the Town and everything changes.

"My name is Alma" is fiction but the author, Hazel Smith, draws on her own experiences growing up in the Caribbean.