Everything Inside

Everything Inside is eight stories about Haitians and their children in Miami, New York and Haiti itself, published by Knopf in August 2019. In "Dosas," Elsie, a home health aide in Miami Shores, gets a panicked call from her ex husband: his new girlfriend has been kidnapped in the Haitian capital and he needs money, and the story turns on how much of her life this two timing scammer has already cost her. In "In the Old Days," Nadia, a New York high school teacher, learns that the father she has never met is dying in Miami and goes to him. "The Gift" puts two former lovers at a Fourth of July dinner, trying to reach each other across everything the 2010 earthquake took. Another story follows Mélisande, a nanny in her twenties in Haiti who is diagnosed with AIDS, whose mother masks concern as cruelty and whose doctor prescribes placebos; the ending, in Michael Schaub's phrase, is "harsh but lifelike."

"Hot-Air Balloons" pairs two college freshmen, Neah, the daughter of academics, and Lucy, the daughter of migrant farm workers, each learning a different Haiti. "Sunrise, Sunset" moves between Carole, slipping into dementia, and her daughter Jeanne, in postpartum depression; "you are always saying hello to them," the mother says of children, "while preparing them to say goodbye to you." In "Without Inspection," an undocumented construction worker falls from rickety scaffolding and, in the seconds of his fall, visits his lover and adopted son one last time.

Danticat writes in plain, unhurried sentences and refuses to rescue anyone. Publishers Weekly praised "plain, propulsive prose" and "great compassion"; Kirkus called the collection "spare, evocative, and moving" and "an extraordinary career milestone." The stories are short and can be read singly, but they gather force in order. It suits readers who want fiction about immigrant life without consolation prizes, and anyone who has cared for a parent at a distance.