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A Novel
by Justin Haynes
A bold, witty, magical new voice in fiction, Justin Haynes weaves a cross-generational Caribbean story of migration, superstition, and a search for family in the novel Ibis.
There is bad luck in New Felicity. The people of the small coastal village have taken in Milagros, an 11-year-old Venezuelan refugee, just as Trinidad's government has begun cracking down on undocumented migrants—and now an American journalist has come to town asking questions.
New Felicity's superstitious fishermen fear the worst, certain they've brought bad luck on the village by killing a local witch who had herself murdered two villagers the year before. The town has been plagued since her death by alarming visits from her supernatural mother, as well as by a mysterious profusion of scarlet ibis birds.
Skittish that the reporter's story will bring down the wrath of the ministry of national security, the fishermen take things into their own hands. From there, we go backward and forward in time—from the town's early days, when it was the site of a sugar plantation, to Milagros's adulthood as she searches for her mother across the Americas.
In between, through the voices of a chorus of narrators, we glimpse moments from various villagers' lives, each one setting into motion events that will reverberate outwards across the novel and shape Milagros's fate.
With kinetic, absorbing language and a powerful sense of voice, Ibis meditates on the bond between mothers and daughters, both highlighting the migrant crisis that troubles the contemporary world and offering a moving exploration of how to square where we come from with who we become.
"This brilliant, shape-shifting novel teems with charms and curses, stunning disasters and startling moments of grace. Haynes is a thrillingly original writer who writes about the thin veil between worlds with spectacular range and scope." ―Jenny Offill, author of Weather
"Ibis took me to totally unexpected places. It's vivid, witty, and heartbreaking as it reckons with myths, migration, and found family. Long after I turned the last page, I'm still thinking of this novel's interrogation of the histories of Venezuela and the Caribbean. What shaped us? Who have we become? Who will we choose to be?" ―Breanne Mc Ivor, author of The God of Good Looks
This information about Ibis was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Justin Haynes was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and later moved to Brooklyn, New York. Having earned his MFA from Notre Dame, he continued his graduate studies at Vanderbilt University. He has been awarded various fiction residencies and fellowships, including from the Fine Arts Work Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Tin House Summer Workshop. His writing has been published in a variety of literary magazines and journals, including Caribbean Quarterly, SX Salon Small Axe Project, and PREE. Justin lives in Atlanta and teaches English at Oglethorpe University.
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