(2003) Spirit of Haiti (City Colours series)

A moving tale of contemporary Haiti dogged by a fascinating history and the fragile lives born of it, this novel tells how the lives of four witnesses of military-ruled Haiti during the terror-filled years of the Duvalier regime of the early 1990s intersect. These vivid characters include Léah Ochún, who rises from the sea like a siren one morning off the coast of Cap Haitien, clothes untouched by water, blue stones wrapped around her neck, eyes blind to light; Carmen, soon to be a mother, who returns to Haiti from Canada as if to the call of the vodou; Alexis, who flees the island in search of a land without strife; and Philippe, who walks the northern hills alert to ancestral voices still haunting its peaks and valleys, his gay identity exploited in tourist trade as he struggles to maintain spiritual dignity and a hold on hope, his body decaying from AIDS. This is ultimately a novel about confronting the failings of the human heart and the triumph of memory over despair.

Reviews for Loneliness of Angels (2010)

“A major new work in Caribbean fiction.”
– Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award Jury

“The Loneliness of Angels is ambitious…an important document of contemporary Haiti as affected by its recent history and its connections with the outside world.”
– Al Creighton’s “Arts on Sunday,” Sunday Stabroek, Guyana (September 25, 2011)

“The Loneliness of Angels reframes migration…as movement that both marks the people and history of the Caribbean and links to something beyond, what [Chancy] has recently called ‘the ability to conceive of a world greater than ourselves and greater than the islands of our origins.’ ….With [this novel] Chancy has exploited and expanded the novel’s form to leave her readers with memorable characters and compelling stories…”
– Sarah Barbour, “The Movement of Migration,” The Caribbean Writer Vol. 25 (Summer 2011)

“Anthems, songs to angels, a character’s obsession with Chopin — music provides spaces of reprieve within the painful memories captured by this novel….[Ruth]’s a fascinating figure [revealed] in a gripping first sentence — ‘Ruth smoothes the plastic covering her memory table as if she is trying to undo wrinkles in time’….The character Rose is even more compelling…The chapter devoted to her is worth the price of the book.”
– Winnipeg Free Press, 4/7/10