Village Weavers

Chancy follows up What Storm, What Thunder with an accomplished chronicle of two childhood best friends in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As girls in the 1940s, Simone “Sisi” Val and Gertrude “Gertie” Alcindor discover a deep connection despite the latter’s more privileged background. They’re separated in the early ’60s, when Sisi flees the repression and violence under despotic president Francois Duvalier for Paris, where she constantly feels the pain of rupture from her homeland and throws herself into a relationship with American student Scott, whom she eventually marries. A parallel narrative follows Gertie, who marries into an affluent Dominican family and moves with her husband to Florida in the ’70s. “Home is no longer a destination,” Sisi reflects as her life takes her farther from Gerti to the U.S. with Scott. Chancy’s heartfelt prose lays bare the women’s inner lives, and the story is further enriched by its symbolism, such as the bird referenced in the title that “talks all day long as market women are said to,” which Sisi remembers when thinking of her grandmother and the other women from Port-au-Prince’s bustling marketplace. The third act turns on a poignant revelation when the protagonists are finally reunited in 1979. Chancy continues to impress with this character-driven view of Haiti’s turbulent history. (Apr.)