It surprises no one that the charming but wayward Vadinho dos Guimaraes a gambler notorious for never winning dies during Carnival. His long suffering widow Dona Flor devotes herself to her cooking school and her friends, who urge her to remarry. She is soon drawn to a kind pharmacist who is everything Vadinho was not, and is altogether happy to marry him. But after her wedding she finds herself dreaming about her first husband s amorous attentions; and one evening Vadinho himself appears by her bed, as lusty as ever, to claim his marital rights."

"The first and only comprehensive study of the West Indian people. Ortiz ushered the Caribbean into the thought of the twentieth century and kept it there." --C. L. R. James