Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged.
[3] Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 – The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living – set in the imaginary island of Cayuna, which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution.
He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, "At the Stelling", set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature.
[5] In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers – Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper – involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service.
It consists of biographical papers, tributes, correspondence, newspaper clippings related to the death of John Hearne, his manuscripts and more.