The Farming of Bones
The Farming of Bones begins in 1937 in a village on the Dominican side of the river that separates the country from Haiti. Amabelle Desir, Haitian-born and a faithful maidservant to the Dominican family that took her in when she was orphaned, and her lover Sebastien, an itinerant sugarcane...
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The Farming of Bones begins in 1937 in a village on the Dominican side of the river that separates the country from Haiti. Amabelle Desir, Haitian-born and a faithful maidservant to the Dominican family that took her in when she was orphaned, and her lover Sebastien, an itinerant sugarcane cutter, decide they will marry and return to Haiti at the end of the cane season. However, hostilities toward Haitian laborers find a vitriolic spokesman in the ultra-nationalist Generalissimo Trujillo who calls for an ethnic cleansing of his Spanish-speaking country. As rumors of Haitian persecution become fact, as anxiety turns to terror, Amabelle and Sebastien's dreams are leveled to the most basic human desire: to endure. Based on a little-known historical event, this extraordinarily moving novel memorializes the forgotten victims of nationalist madness and the deeply felt passion and grief of its survivors.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780140280494 (0140280499)
ASIN: 140280499
Publish date: September 1st 1999
Publisher: Penguin
Pages no: 312
Edition language: English
Category:
Novels,
Academic,
School,
Literature,
Book Club,
Adult Fiction,
Read For School,
Historical Fiction,
Literary Fiction,
Adult,
Contemporary
I was really expecting to like this book. It looked interesting and had a good topic, but it just didn't work. The author would start and idea, and never finish it. Like the fact she was a kind of mid-wife, it felt like it was going some where but never did. Another problem was the ending, I'm not s...
Two-point-five starsThis book really wants to be "literary" fiction, but it lacks the necessary warmth and depth. The characters are flat and underdeveloped, such that it's hard to feel sorrow for their suffering. The only way I could work up any kind of caring was to remind myself that these char...
Perfection. From the introductory quote of the "shibboleth" passage in the Bible, through the Parsley Massacre in the Dominican Republic, to the frantic return to Haiti, this book is history, tragedy, thriller, and inspiring story all wrapped into one. Haitian American Edwidge Danticat knows how to ...
A beautiful, intense novel about a part of the world and a historical era Americans know little about. Danticat is a brilliant writer and her characters are fully-formed and real. I found myself holding my breath throughout this book: you know horror is coming and the matter isn't when but just ho...