When the Mapou Sings

Infused with magical realism, this story blends first love and political intrigue with a quest for justice and self-determination in 1930s Haiti.

Sixteen-year-old Lucille hopes to one day open a school alongside her best friend where girls just like them can learn what it means to be Haitian: to learn from the mountains and the forests around them, to carve, to sew, to draw, and to sing the songs of the Mapou, the sacred trees that dot the island nation. But when her friend vanishes without a trace, a dreama gift from the Mapoutells Lucille to go to her villages section chief, the local face of law, order, and corruption, which puts her life and her familys at risk.
Forced to flee her home, Lucille takes a servant post with a wealthy Haitian woman from societys elite in Port-au-Prince. Despite a warning to avoid him, she falls in love with her employers son. But when their relationship is found out, she must leave againthis time banished to another city to work for a visiting American writer and academic conducting fieldwork in Haiti. While Lucilles new employer studies vodou and works on the novel that will become Their Eyes Were Watching God, Lucille risks losing everything she cares aboutand any chance of seeing her best friend againas she fights to save their lives and secure her future in this novel in verse with the racing heart of a thriller.