Synopses & Reviews
It is 1937, a dangerous year in the Dominican Republic, where Haitian laborers are useful, rather than welcome; tolerated, but not trusted. Amabelle, a young Haitian woman orphaned at the age of eight, is a faithful servant to the young wife of an army colonel, living in the household where the two women grew up together. Amabelle's lover Sebastien is an itinerant sugarcane cutter, a handsome man despite the scars on his face, the calluses on his hands.
There are rumors that in other towns Haitians are being persecuted, even killed, but there are always rumors. Amabelle longs to become Sebastien's wife, to return with him to Haiti at the end of the cane season and begin a new life. Instead, the nationalist madness erupts, and terror engulfs them.
A devastating and beautiful novel The Farming of Bones is about love, dignity, pain, and memory, and about that most basic of hopes when all other hope is lost: to endure.
Synopsis
It is 1937 and Amabelle Désir, a young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. She and Sebastien, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry. But Amabelle's world collapses when a wave of genocidal violence, driven by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, leads to the slaughter of Haitian workers. Amabelle and Sebastien are separated, and she desperately flees the tide of violence for a Haiti she barely remembers.
Already acknowledged as a classic, this harrowing story of love and survival—from one of the most important voices of her generation—is an unforgettable memorial to the victims of the Parsley Massacre and a testimony to the power of human memory.
About the Author
Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including Brother, I’m Dying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a National Book Award finalist; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; and The Dew Breaker, winner of the inaugural Story Prize. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. The Farming of Bones won an American Book Award for fiction in 1999.