Mars' most recent novel, "Je suis vivant" tells the story of a bourgeois Haitian family that suddenly has to welcome Alexandre back home after the mental health facility where he has spent the last three decades is forced to shut down because of the January 12, 2010 earthquake. While in the institution, Alexandre has visions, hears voices, and witnesses the earthquake from inside the walls. He notes that for once the cries and histrionics came from outside the institution's walls. Alexandre, however, is not the only character to make a return to the family house in the suburb of Fleur-de-Chêne. His younger sister, Marylène, returns to Haiti after studying and launching a career as a painter in Brussels. Coming back to the Caribbean, Marylène finds herself worn out, adorned with a pacemaker, and seeks new beginnings as she falls in love with Norah, the woman she has employed to model for her recent paintings. These parallel returns relieve and weigh heavily on Éliane, the family matriarch and aging mother who is admittedly being kept alive by the virtue of a series of medications and careful attention. Throughout the novel the narrative voice shifts between first person accounts from the various siblings and Éliane, a style that Mars employed in "Saisons sauvages".