Gabriel is a mural painter from Dutch Surinam who has been hired to paint a mural of the Virgin Mary in a church in Curaçao. Curaçao is a self-governing island in the Netherlands Antillees off the coast of South America. In the story, he has taken a mixed-race woman as his model, and the emerging picture, with its negroid features, is creating quite a stir. Meanwhile, he has fallen in love with his model, who is engaged to a white police officer, and the wife of the island's governor has fallen in love with him. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi