American Book Award Winner
Aspen
Words Literary Prize Finalist
An
NPR, Boston Globe, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library,
and Library Journal Best Book of the Year
“Stunning.”
—Margaret Atwood
At
the end of a long, sweltering day, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude
shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author
Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the
characters affected by the disaster—Richard, an expat and wealthy
water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne,
an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global
NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful
call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonné, who are
followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier,
an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother
haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP camp; her husband,
Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their
son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling
produce in the market who remembers them all.
Brilliantly
crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What
Storm, What Thunder
is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking
trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable
testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.
