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Christian Century, Sept 22, 1999 by John M. Buchanan, Victoria Rebeck, Trudy Bush, Dean Peerman

We soon discover that Billy's lifelong obsession and his anger at God were based on an illusion, a well-meant lie told him by his cousin, Dennis, to shield Billy from the pain of the girl's betrayal of him.

In telling the story of the two cousins and of the close-knit Irish Catholic community in which they are embedded, McDermott explores commitment both to love and to religion--two faiths, for these people, "no less keen than their suspicion that in the end they might be proven wrong. And their certainty that they would continue to believe anyway."

Dean Peerman:

"El Corte," the cutting, it was called--a euphemism akin to "ethnic cleansing." It was one of the worst massacres of modern times, though manet of the world seems to have forgotten about it. It took place in the Dominican Republic in 1937. Raphael Trujillo, a military leader and former sugar plantation guard (and former hoodlum) who had been trained by U.S. marines during the 1916-1924 U.S. occupation of his country, managed to get himself elected president in 1930 (there were more votes than eligible voters). Seven years into his rule, Trujillo secretly ordered the killing of thousands of immigrants--most of them sugarcane cutters--from Haiti, the country with which the DR shares the island of Hispaniola. In his view, the Haitians, whom he considered inferior beings, had simply become too numerous. The military police were instructed to use machetes in their murdering, in the hope of putting the blame on civilians. Some Haitians were given a choice, however, of jumping off a high cliff rather than being hacked to death.

The novel The Farming of Bones, by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, is set in that terrible time, but while politics, race and class are among its subjects, it is far from being an ideological tract. Danticat writes a poetic, evocative prose that is replete with vivid human details, and her characters are distinctive, fully realized individuals. In this work, history and fiction are interwoven in a seamless and compelling fashion.

Amabelle Desir, the novel's Haitian-born narrator, is a servant in the home of a prominent Dominican family--a family that has raised her since the age of eight, following her parents' death by drowning (an event she observed helplessly from the riverbank). When Senora Valencia, the mistress of the house, is about to give birth, Amabelle unexpectedly has to serve as midwife. The senora has twins--a boy, who shortly dies, and a dark-skinned daughter. At one point she says to Amabelle--in words she no doubt thinks are inoffensive: "Do you think my daughter will always be the color she is now? My poor love, what if she's mistaken for one of your people?" Senor Pico, the twins' father, a colonel. in service to "the Generalissimo" (as Trujillo is referred to throughout), cannot bear even to look at his swarthy daughter after her twin brother dies.

Mature for her 25 years and remarkably confident despite her servant status, Amabelle allows herself to show a more tender and vulnerable side only in the presence of her lover, a canecutter named Sebastien Onius. When the crackdown comes and Amabelle and Sebastien realize they must flee for their lives, circumstances separate the two, and Sebastien is arrested (by Senor Pico, we learn much later) along with Father Romain, a liberal priest who had arranged to smuggle a group to Haiti. Eventually Amabelle finds out that Sebastien has been executed. She and Sebastien's friend Yves do manage to escape, and after a harrowing odyssey (including a near-fatal ordeal that leaves Amabelle disfigured) they finally reach Haiti. Amabelle survives, working as a seamstress, but she never marries, and she remains troubled by her painful memories. At age 50--after the Generalissimo has been assassinated--she returns to visit the senora, but communication is awkward and difficult between them after so many years. The senora tries to apologize--and make excuses--for her husband's role in "El Corte."