The easy candour with which Melita Samuels talks about beating the odds against a challenging childhood in western Jamaica and disastrous marriage to educate and establish herself as a confident phenomenal woman, is well worth the J$1,000 for her first novel, A girl called Anne.

Throw in the fact that this salacious, rancour-free narrative is coming from a 74-year-old woman (although you’d never guess by looking) and it becomes priceless.

“Not many women would talk about their marriage in the way Melita has. When things go wrong, when there’s infidelity, when the man has not treated them well, they tend to sweep that part of it under the carpet, but Melita told it without losing her dignity at any time,” said publisher Lloyd B Smith at last Thursday’s launch of the book.

A casually elegant affair, the launch at the University of the West Indies’ open campus on Montego Bay’s Orange Street was attended by an intellectually savvy gathering which included the Calvary Baptist Church’s Reverend Everton Jackson and his wife Cecelia; Former Cornwall College educator Lucy McClennon; Samuels’ niece Resident Magistrate Lyle Armstrong; veteran educator, Dr D Channer-Watson; former principal of the Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College Dr Cecile Walden and newly-installed president of the Cornwall Bar Association Jeanne Robinson Foster among many others.

Together they celebrated the achievements of Samuels who is known in literary circles for a number of products among them Lime Tree Lane, one of the most successful sitcoms to run on local television in the eighties.

As script writer for Lime Tree Lane, Samuels captured an affectionate spot in the hearts of the many viewers who tuned in on weekdays for the five-minute comic relief break that immortalised the characters of Judith ‘Lucrecia Upton’ Thompson; Christopher ‘Johnny’ Daley; Dorothy ‘Miss Zella’ Cunningham to name a few.

Born in Hampton St James on May 11, 1935, Samuels nee Williams, showed signs of brilliance from the get go.

And on reading A girl called Anne, one can’t help but wonder where Samuels would have been today had she not defied the mystique of the strange character in the novel who indirectly advised her against choosing Andel Samuels as a husband over her childhood sweetheart.

Not that she’s not in a good place.

On the contrary, Samuels is holding her own in academic circles with a Masters degree in Education Administration and on the national stage with the honour of the order of distinction for her outstanding achievements as an educator.

“It is truly a failing on the part of the media that the achievements of this phenomenal woman have not been included on the lists which are compiled on occasion,” rued Walden who introduced Samuels to the audience.