Dèy a novel
"Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?" These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami. When she hears gunfire while at a shopping mall, she takes shelter in a nearby restaurant, cowering with fellow shoppers and diners. Once...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Alfred A. Knopf,
2026.
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| Edition: | First hardcover edition. |
| Subjects: | |
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| Summary: | "Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?" These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami. When she hears gunfire while at a shopping mall, she takes shelter in a nearby restaurant, cowering with fellow shoppers and diners. Once she's safely home, Magnolia keeps this traumatic event from everyone. But given her life back, she begins to see everything clearly: her extraordinary bond with her daughter, Zoë; her nearly broken relationship with Zoë's father; the challenges of her mentally troubled mother, whose unraveling patterns Magnolia worries she's spiraling toward herself; and her father's affair with a woman who has borne him a child. While struggling through the labyrinth of her past, Magnolia must also come to terms with the losses sustained that life-altering day, and nearly every day by her parents and sibling in Haiti. Can love or family protect us from harm? Does optimism or fear win out in one's heart? Which side will prevail for Magnolia? Pulled between these questions, each of which involves a high-stakes choice--Miami or Haiti, single or married, mortal or ghost, before or after--Magnolia is a narrator who is "yon pati koukouy, part firefly" flitting and shimmering between different worlds. Taking as its title a Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning, Dèy is a profoundly warm and moving novel about the importance not only of sharing grief but also of inseverable family ties. |
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| Physical Description: | 233 pages ; 22 cm |
| ISBN: | 9780593803523 0593803523 |
| Author Notes: | Along with awards for fiction from Seventeen and Essence and the 1995 Pushcart Short Story Prize, Danticat was chosen by Harper's Bazaar as "one of 20 people in their twenties who will make a difference," and by the New York Times Magazine as one of "30 Under 30" people to watch. Her second novel, The Farming of Bones (1998), concerns a massacre in Haiti in 1937. (Bowker Author Biography) |
