DÈY

A Haitian American woman reckons with the aftermath of witnessing a mass shooting.

The crises are piling up for Magnolia, the hero of Danticat’s fifth novel and first in more than a decade. She’s falling short in her job as a Miami real estate agent; back in Haiti, her parents are increasingly threatened by marauding gangs; her mother is showing signs of dementia; and her relationship with Harrison, the father of her 9-year-old daughter, Zoë, remains frustratingly unsettled. And as the novel opens, a trip to the mall to purchase Zoë a phone has led to her cowering in a restaurant as a mass shooter stalks victims. Magnolia says nothing about her near-death experience to family, friends, and co-workers, who are all entangled in her world. (Her boss is Harrison’s cousin.) But as the situations both at home and in Haiti become more dire, her attempts to suppress her trauma take a toll. As ever, Danticat is gifted at capturing the nuances of the Haitian diaspora, undoing simplistic depictions of the country’s struggles, and using language to show how various elements of her characters’ identities intersect. (For instance, “Ma” is both Magnolia’s nickname and a maternal reference, while one of the Haitian gangs is called San Manman, meaning “motherless.”) Plotwise, the novel is a straightforward chronicle of Magnolia’s struggle to manage her responses to the shooting; Danticat’s prose is unshowy, sometimes to the point of being curiously muted. But there’s depth to the questions the novel raises: The title is the Haitian creole word for mourning, and as Magnolia contemplates losses in her present-day community and close to home, Danticat’s understated writing emerges as a strength. Throughout, she underscores the notion that, no matter the country, safety is uncertain: As Magnolia somberly muses, “There are no actual places of refuge, no veritable harbors, no sanctuaries.”

A powerful study of motherhood, nationhood, and violence.