Ibis: A Novel
About this ebook
New Felicity’s bad luck goes back centuries. Shaped by slavery, rebellion, and repression, the small coastal village in Trinidad is now facing a crackdown by the government, just as its people have taken in Milagros, an 11-year-old refugee from Venezuela. Meanwhile, scarlet ibis birds have mysteriously started appearing in town, and New Felicity’s superstitious fisherman fear the worst, certain they’ve brought on bad luck by killing a local witch. Skittish that a reporter’s story will bring down the wrath of the Ministry of National Security, the fishermen take things into their own hands.
Justin Haynes’s widely acclaimed Ibis moves backward and forward in time, from the town’s early days as a sugar plantation to Milagros’s adulthood as she searches for her mother across the Americas. A novel of mothers and daughters, origins and becomings, Ibis is a moving exploration of the migrant crisis and the contemporary Caribbean.
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About the author
Justin Haynes was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and later moved to Brooklyn, New York. Having earned his MFA from Notre Dame, he continued his graduate studies at Vanderbilt University. He has been awarded various fiction residencies and fellowships, including from the Fine Arts Work Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Tin House Summer Workshop. His writing has been published in a variety of literary magazines and journals, including Caribbean Quarterly, SX Salon Small Axe Project, and PREE. Justin lives in Atlanta and teaches English at Oglethorpe University.
