Infused with magical realism, this story blends first love and political intrigue with a quest for justice and
self-determination in 1930s Haiti.Sixteen-year-old Lucille hopes to one day open a school alongside her best
friend where girls just like them can learn what it means to be Haitian: to learn from the mountains and the
forests around them, to carve, to sew, to draw, and to sing the songs of the Mapou, the sacred trees that dot the
island nation. But when her friend vanishes without a trace, a dream—a gift from the Mapou—tells Lucille to
go to her village’s section chief, the local face of law, order, and corruption, which puts her life and her family’s
at risk. Forced to flee her home, Lucille takes a servant post with a wealthy Haitian woman from society’s
elite in Port-au-Prince. Despite a warning to avoid him, she falls in love with her employer’s son. But when
their relationship is found out, she must leave again—this time banished to another city to work for a visiting
American writer and academic conducting fieldwork in Haiti. While Lucille’s new employer studies vodou and
works on the novel that will become Their Eyes Were Watching God, Lucille risks losing everything she cares
about—and any chance of seeing her best friend again—as she fights to save their lives and secure her future
in this novel in verse with the racing heart of a thriller.
