The farming of bones
Subtitle: a novel
By: Edwidge Danticat.
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 312
Subjects: Trujillo Molina, Rafael Leónidas, 1891-1961 -- Fiction; Dominican-Haitian Conflict, 1937 -- Fiction; Haitians -- Dominican Republic -- Fiction; Women domestics -- Fiction; Plantation life -- Fiction; Massacres -- Fiction; Refugees -- Fiction; Genocide -- Fiction; Dominican Republic -- Fiction; Haiti -- Fiction
Description: It is 1937, the Dominican side of the Haitian border. Amabelle, orphaned at the age of eight when her parents drowned, is a maid to the young wife of an army colonel. She has grown up in this household, a faithful servant. Sebastien is a field hand, an itinerant sugarcane cutter. They are Haitians, useful to the Dominicans but not really welcome. There are rumors that in other towns Haitians are being persecuted, even killed. But there are always rumors.

Amabelle loves Sebastien. He is handsome despite the sugarcane scars on his face, his calloused hands. She longs to become his wife and walk into their future. Instead, terror enfolds them. But the story does not end here: it begins. The Farming of Bones is about love, fragility, barbarity, dignity, remembrance, and the only triumph possible for the persecuted: to endure.