Dèy

Magnolia is a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami, and one sunny day at a shopping mall she hears gunfire and ducks into a nearby restaurant, crouched among strangers until the danger passes. She goes home safe and tells no one. But having been handed her life back, she starts seeing it with new clarity: the closeness she shares with her daughter, Zoë; her strained bond with Zoë's father; her mother's mental decline, which Magnolia fears she may be following; and her father's affair with a woman who has had his child.

The book moves between Haiti, Brooklyn and Miami as Magnolia works through her past. She also has to face the losses that her parents and sibling in Haiti live with, and not only on the day of the shooting but on nearly every day. The questions that trouble her are hard ones. Is home where we are born, or where we die? Can love or family keep us from harm? Does optimism or fear win out in the end? Each question comes down to a choice: Miami or Haiti, single or married, mortal or ghost, before or after.

Magnolia describes herself with the Kreyòl phrase "yon pati koukouy," part firefly, flitting and shimmering between worlds. The title is the Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning, and the novel is warm and moving in its treatment of grief shared and family ties that cannot be cut.

Edwidge Danticat's novel was longlisted for the National Book Award.