42 pages • 1 hour read
Edwidge DanticatA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Amabelle is now haunted by dreams of giving her “testimony” (264). She says she knew all along that people were evil, but she did not want to believe they could be evil to her or that evil could live in the same house as her. She says the danger only became real when she found out Sebastien and Mimi had been killed. She thinks about the graves of all the people she has loved—graves that she will never be able to find—and then imagines her own grave. The river continues to dominate her thoughts.
Amabelle grows old living with Man Rapadou and Yves. Yves and Amabelle remain distant and only talk when necessary. Twenty-four years after the massacre, the Generalissimo is killed, and Haiti breaks out in celebration. Amabelle joins in and even dances, much to Yves’s consternation, as he does not think people should be happy about anything that involves so many deaths. They see Father Romain at the celebration, and he looks much better than when Amabelle last saw him. He has renounced the fatherhood and now has a wife and three kids. He says he will return to the Dominican Republic to help people from the town where Amabelle once lived.
By Edwidge Danticat