A flood strikes Creighton's Village on G.'s ninth birthday, prompting neighbors to call it a blessing while G. considers it a letdown.

Miss Foster visits the landlord after the flood and is invited to tea and given money for her troubles.

An envelope with compromising photos of the head teacher's wife falls from Mr. Slime's pocket at school, upending both men's lives.

Mr. Slime leaves the village school and establishes the Penny Bank and Friendly Society, rising as the village's political champion.

Villagers go on strike and Mr. Slime negotiates with the shipping authorities on their behalf for better wages.

Mr. Slime tells the striking workers to return to work, promising higher wages, but the men find the outcome anticlimactic.

G., Trumper, and Boy Blue trespass on the landlord's estate to spy on a sailors' party, setting off serious consequences.

The landlord, falsely believing three natives nearly assaulted his daughter, threatens to sell his land and abandon the village.

Riots engulf the city, and Po King, a young man from Creighton's Village, is shot and killed by police.

Mr. Slime arrives at the village during the riot and his presence tempers the angry mob, allowing the landlord to escape.

Ma dies after hitting her head on a partition while trying to forcefully wake Pa from his restless dream.

G. accepts a teaching position in Trinidad, and Trumper departs for America, beginning the dispersal of the younger generation.

A stranger arrives at Mr. Foster's home and informs him that the landlord has sold the land and he must vacate.

The head teacher visits Pa to inform him his land has been sold and he will be moved to the Alms House.

Trumper returns from America and tells G. about the Negro race; they watch the shoemaker's shop crumble on the eve of G.'s departure.

The novel opens with a flood that disrupts G.'s ninth birthday, establishing a community perpetually at the mercy of larger forces beyond its control. Mr. Slime rises from village schoolteacher to political champion, using a workers' strike to build his reputation as a defender of the poor and the voiceless. A chain of misunderstanding — rooted in the boys' trespass on the landlord's estate — convinces the landlord his daughter was nearly assaulted, pushing him toward a devastating decision about the land. When city riots erupt and a villager is killed, Mr. Slime saves the landlord but his true motives grow darker as a secretive land deal begins to surface. Ma's death removes the village's last spiritual guardian, leaving Pa and the whole community exposed to the predatory dealings that follow. The village is stripped of its land by strangers and opportunists, and G. departs for Trinidad just as Trumper returns from America with the political wisdom of the Negro race.

The rise and fall of Creighton's Village.

G.'s mother sings during the birthday flood and the entire neighborhood joins in, expressing the village's deep communal spirit.

G. feeds his pet pigeon castor oil and the bird dies; he buries it in the yard, overcome with shame.

Bob breaks the fence while spying on G.'s bath, and his furious mother beats him so hard he falls into G.'s yard.

Bob hides in G.'s house after the fence incident and escapes his mother by disguising himself as a bear.

Schoolchildren march in squads and perform songs for the visiting English inspector during the annual Empire Day parade.

The head teacher beats an innocent boy savagely for laughing during the parade, leaving him bleeding and unable to stand.

Schoolboys puzzle over what slavery means after hearing old people say the queen set them free, unable to grasp their own history.

Pa compares Mr. Slime to Moses as a bringer of change, while Ma warns against placing faith in any man over God.

Baby Parker and Sheila get into a public fistfight over a village affair scandal and the constable arrives to break it up.

G. tracks Bob down at the beach, where Trumper and Boy Blue play King Canute until a wave sends Bob fleeing in panic.

Boy Blue is swept out to sea by a wave and rescued by a fisherman, whose anger shatters the boys' illusions about him.

Trumper and Bob slip out to join the city riots; Bob passes out upon returning after witnessing police shootings in the streets.

G. visits Pa and they discuss Ma's death, the war's gutting of the island's infrastructure, and rumors about the landlord selling.

G. reads his journal and recalls overhearing Mr. Slime plot how villagers, unable to pay cash for land, would be charged interest.

G.'s mother prepares his farewell dinner and tries to spank him for disrespect, but the two end up laughing together.

These events trace the warmth and friction of everyday life in Creighton's Village, from communal singing during the flood to small dramas among children and neighbors in tight quarters. The village school is exposed as a place of colonial miseducation, where boys are beaten for minor infractions and left ignorant of their own history as descendants of enslaved people. The political ferment of the workers' strike spills into personal quarrels and public spectacle, capturing how the village processes conflict through gossip and performance. A long day at the beach brings the boys face to face with mortality when Boy Blue nearly drowns, and the reckless adventure of joining the city riots costs Bob and Trumper the last of their childhood innocence. As G. prepares to leave for Trinidad, he rereads journals that expose Mr. Slime's financial betrayal of the villagers and shares a tense but tender farewell with his mother, carrying the weight of a community already unraveling around him.

Childhood, community, and the texture of village life.

G. stands frozen and naked in the yard while his mother wields a switch and neighbors laugh at him through the fence.

Miss Foster confronts the landlord's overseer after the flood and boldly tells him he is no better than she is.

The shoemaker argues that black people must unite as brothers and rise up, invoking Marcus Garvey, while the men await strike news.

G. spies on Bob at the beach, the two accidentally crash into each other, and G. realizes a silent rift has formed between them.

The boys share an epiphany that time feels suspended in youth, then debate marriage and death through stories of troubled village couples.

Trumper argues that if conditions for a wedding exist it must happen even without the groom, revealing his philosophical nature to the others.

Bob insists no other land or water exists beyond Barbados, revealing the village boys' insular and limited view of the world.

G., Boy Blue, and Trumper attend an open-air church meeting and nearly get called up to be saved by the passionate preacher.

The boys escape a pursuing overseer by rushing to the front of the church meeting and pretending to be converted.

Pa speaks aloud in his sleep about Africa and the Middle Passage, calling ancient silver the root of the islands' suffering.

G. passes his public examinations and enters high school, which his old friends mark as the moment he is no longer one of them.

A German submarine bombs a ship in the harbor, forcing the village to confront the terrifying reality of World War II.

The overseer posts a bill confirming the landlord has sold the village land and that residents must contact Mr. Slime for information.

Trumper calls Mr. Slime a criminal, the first time G. and his mother have thought of Mr. Slime in a negative light.

G. wanders the village feeling he is seeing everything for the last time, then says farewell to the land as he leaves Barbados.

From G.'s earliest awareness of the gap between how the world is described to him and how it actually feels, the novel builds toward a series of revelations about power, identity, and self-knowledge. Small acts of defiance — Miss Foster confronting the overseer, the shoemaker invoking Marcus Garvey — show individuals beginning to name and resist the colonial order pressing down on them. The boys' long philosophical beach conversations reveal how desperately they are trying to understand their world without the language or education to do so. Trespassing on the landlord's property and faking religious conversion to escape an overseer capture the boys testing boundaries they do not yet fully understand. Pa's dreamed monologue about the Middle Passage unlocks the deep historical wound beneath the village's daily life, while G.'s entry into high school marks his irreversible separation from his community. By the end, Trumper's exposure of Mr. Slime and his lesson about the Negro race complete G.'s political awakening, sending him into the wider world carrying new and bittersweet knowledge.