Dominoes A Novel

A tender and provocative debut novel about a mixed-race British woman who makes the shocking discovery in the days leading up to her wedding that her fiancé’s family may have enslaved her ancestors

Dominoes opens in London, twenty-nine days before the wedding of a young couple. Layla is a mixed-race woman—with a Black, Jamaican mother and a white father she’s never met—and Andy is a white man of Scottish descent. When they first meet at a party, they can’t believe how instant their chemistry is, and how quickly their relationship unfolds. But the commonalities between the two outweigh their differences; funnily enough, they even share a last name: McKinnon.

Layla’s best friend, Sera, isn’t so sure—about Andy, or the fact that her best friend is engaged to marry a white man. As Layla’s wedding date approaches, Sera prompts her friend to research her heritage more, and in the undertaking, Layla makes a shocking discovery: It’s not just possible but extremely likely that Andy’s ancestors enslaved Layla’s in Jamaica, and that the money from that enslavement helped build his family’s wealth.

What seemed like a fairy-tale romance is suddenly derailed as Layla begins to uncover parts of her history and identity that she never could have imagined—or had simply learned to ignore. The task takes her to Jamaica for the first time, where she meets family members for the first time, and uncovers truths about her family’s history that will change the way she thinks about herself and her future. As the clock ticks down to her wedding—four days, three days, two days—Layla must make a decision: commit to the man she loves or expose a shameful history that has gone unspoken for far too long.

Conversation-starting, open-hearted, and unforgettable, Dominoes shows us that only by fully confronting the past can one hope to move forward.

Phoebe McIntosh is an actress and playwright from London. She wrote and performed in a sell-out run of her first play, The Tea Diaries, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, followed by her solo show, Dominoes, which toured the South East and London. She completed the Soho Theatre Writers' Lab program, and her most recent full-length play, The Soon Life, was shortlisted and highly commended for the Tony Craze Award as well as being longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award. Phoebe won a place on the inaugural Tamasha x Hachette creative writing program and was selected for Penguin's WriteNow program.