“I told her that I loved her more than the sea had water. ‘I love you more than the earth has air,’ she’d say.”
Edwidge Danticat’s Dèy (Knopf 2026), is a delicate and fragile novel of love, grief, and home. Of the seven books I’ve read that are longlisted for the National Book Award, Dèy has a quiet, unassuming strength to it. The novel wasn’t quite what I expected, though I am unsure as to what I expected. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. (Right now, my pick for a winner is Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You.)
Dèy tells the story of Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami, and her family. The novel opens with Magnolia at a mall when a shooter opens fire. She is traumatized and buries her head in the sand, like an ostrich, to pretend she wasn’t there. Her daughter, Zoe, is learning what to do at school when there is an active shooter. Her parents have returned home to Haiti, where gang members parade about with military rifles and they are no longer safe. And then the Parkland school shooting occurs.
Haiti is not safe. The mall is not safe. Schools are not safe. Magnolia is overwhelmed with grief and fear, the weight of her family’s world on her shoulders. The fact her family has nicknamed her “Ma” for Magnolia is not lost on the reader or Magnolia herself. The title comes from a Haitian Creole word for “mourning,” and that is indeed what this novel is – a mourning period. But there is light and hope and love and flowers.
The novel is beautifully written, unassuming and exquisite, carried by the strength of the story and the restraint of the storyteller. I can see why it was listed.
