What Storm, What Thunder : A Novel
Author(s): Myriam J.A. Chancy
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, 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. Artfully weaving together these lives, this gripping story gives witness to the desolation wreaked by nature and by man.
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.
Review(s):
Featured Essay
Best Book of the Week
"This [book] is not to be missed."
"Survivors and victims tell their powerful, moving stories in this fictional account of the 2010 Haitian earthquake....Their stories are not always easy to read, but they shouldn’t be. Chancy offers fleeting redemption for some characters, but she does not deal in false hopes. “We all look away unless it’s us, or someone we love, going up in flames,” one character muses. In this devastating work, Chancy refuses to let any of us look away. A devastating, personal, and vital account."
A MUST-READ BOOK FOR THE FALL
"Chancy offers her readers the rare opportunity to view the earthquake’s aftermath from multiple angles, with every shadow of doubt, every glimmer of hope, illuminating the ever-expanding history of the catastrophe and its devastation."
“Chancy reminds us that the headlines and statistics were but part of the story of death and destruction....In her intricate tale of how the tragedy is multiplied by systemic social failures that follow the earthquake, Chancy examines the difficult question of how people move past grief of this magnitude, personally and collectively. Every element of the writing and characterization delivers a poignant experience.”
NAMED A Best Book of the Week and a Most Anticipated Book of October
A Most Anticipated Book of Fall. "This is fiction as an act of bearing witness — in this case, to the historical trauma of Haiti’s January 2010 earthquake, in which as many as 300,000 people were killed.....The condition of crisis that Chancy evokes, simultaneously unimaginable and everyday, resonates as loudly as ever."
A Best Book of Fall. "[An] incredibly powerful read."
ISBN: 9781443460354