"Paradise" is structured around eight chapters, each bearing a woman"s name. each adding a different point of view to the narrative. It"s set in Ruby, a fictitious black town founded by proud, racially pure men who emerged from the fight against slavery only to find there was yet another hierarchy — this time based on gradations of skin colour — to keep them down. yet the myth of ruby"s own racial genealogy. its piety and self-righteousness is fragile. and the women who skirt the town"s boundaries. preferring to take refuge in their own company. threaten to blow it apart.