Up in Mahaica: Stories from the Market People is a collection of short stories about unusual characters in an oil refinery in southern Trinidad. They scheme against each other and resort to obeah to win affection or to avenge real or imagined offenses. And through it all, most residents secretly want to abandon the poverty of their post colonial existence and escape to the middleclass mirage the oil company created up in Mahaica. The open-air market vendors, the only ones not beholden to the British company, hold the community's secrets.