Bermuda's racial developments over the last four decades, will be published at the end of next month.

`The People of Bermuda -- Beyond the Crossroads', by Barbara Harries Hunter, represents seven years of painstaking reading and research, backed up by interviews with many of the leading players in Bermuda's story.

The importance of this publication is underlined by the fact that the Business and Professional Women's Association of Bermuda has lent its support to Mrs.

Hunter's efforts by launching the book on her behalf.

Divided into 27 chapters, commencing with an overview of the fifties as a decade of change, and concluding with an epilogue which examines the effects of the recession of the early 1990s, Mrs. Hunter has made a detailed study of Bermuda's progress -- and setbacks -- in race relations.

Her community involvement led to her realisation that the story of these last 40 years should be told now, while most of the participants could still be contacted and "before any more events and people are forgotten.'' Asked what had moved her to personally undertake this mammoth task, (the book is 400 pages long) Mrs. Hunter's reply is a simple one: "An understanding of what upsets people is the reason for this book.'' Not only has Mrs. Hunter made a detailed chronological study of events, she has also provided valuable and illuminating comparisons with other areas where racial tension has been a problem, particularly the United States and the Caribbean.

Her book embraces just about every aspect of life from politics and constitutional affairs to education, sport, and the arts. She does not shrink from cataloguing the more emotional events in Bermuda's sometimes tortuous march towards improved racial harmony: the restaurant and movie theatre boycotts of 1959, the BELCO strikes and riots of 1965, the `Floral Pageant Riots' of 1968, the assassination of Sir Richard Sharples and his ADC, the subsequent hangings of Burrows and Tacklyn and the bloody aftermath, are all recorded.

But so, too, is the happier story of social compromise, of the determination by leaders of both races to bring about peaceful change through racial reforms and the rise of political parties.

Mrs. Hunter relied heavily on The Royal Gazette for the day-to-day factual coverage of events, "particularly as Bermuda has no Hansard.'' She also made extensive use of features and reports in the Mid-Ocean News and the Bermuda Sun.

"I read straight through The Royal Gazette until the late sixties. At that point -- and I may have made a mistake in doing that -- but I switched at that point to subject topics. This was because I needed to work faster and I had now reached the period that has been indexed by the Bermuda Library. The last few chapters are wider in scope, more in the nature of surveys.'' She pays tribute to "the many people'' who have assisted in her task, including Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan, and Opposition leaders Mr. Frederick Wade and Mr. Gilbert Darrell. She also singles out Mr. Walter Robinson, who read her chapter on the Constitutional Conference which took place in London in 1967, and government statistician Mr. Donald Scott, who read the entire book. She says, too, that the chapters dealing with labour problems were "read by leading officials.'' The lively, but always even-handed narrative, reflects the personality of Mrs.

Hunter herself. A native of New Zealand, she credits her "non-judgmental'' attitude to two main influences in her life. First, was what she describes as her cosmopolitan childhood where, as the daughter of a League of Nations official, she was "quite used'' to having non-whites staying as welcome guests in her parents' home. She lived in Geneva until she was 11, when the family moved to Britain where she eventually become involved with what is now the British Commonwealth Ex-Service League.

The second great influence in her life, claims Mrs. Hunter, was her first husband, scientist Owen Harries, with whom she settled in Bermuda in 1947. Her book, she says, is a tribute to him.

"We brought few prejudices in our baggage when we came to Bermuda,'' she recalls, "but even though we liked the white Bermudians, we were disturbed and somewhat shocked. We thought that many of them were unwise. Although my husband died long before this book was even thought of, he nevertheless had a part in it, because he considered that blame of other people is something in which we should not indulge. I hope this book reflects his sentiments.'' Because of the social set-up of the Island in the late 1940s, Mrs. Hunter had no opportunity of mixing with black people until, after her husband's death in 1965, she became a reading specialist at Prospect Primary School.

"That was really the Genesis of this book,'' she explains, recalling her great happiness and the friends she made there, a period that ended only because she had to return temporarily to Britain for personal reasons. On her return, she taught at Gilbert Institute. She acquired Bermudian status in 1957 and has two Bermudian sons. In 1985, Barbara Harries married Robert G. Hunter of North Carolina and they now divide their time between the US and Bermuda, "at the moment, on a weekly basis!'' `Beyond the Crossroads' is being distributed by BDC and is published at a pre-sale price of $30 and will retail at $35.

BEYOND THE CROSSROADS -- Mrs. Barbara Harries Hunter with the manuscript of her book, `The People of Bermuda -- Beyond the Crossroads'.