Ibis

Haynes debuts with a spectacular centuries-spanning tale of slavery and human trafficking in Trinidad and Venezuela. New Felicity, Trinidad, is cursed by blood. In the 1780s, an attempted escape by slaves on the Cruickshank sugar plantation meets with brutal reprisal: men, women, and children are slaughtered, acres of cane are burnt, families are wrenched apart, and after one woman is tortured, she magically disappears, leaving behind the feathers of a tropical ibis. In present-day New Felicity, a group of residents care for orphaned Venezuelan migrant Milagros, who seeks asylum in the U.S. with the help of a fisherwoman and eventually becomes a journalist there. Driven by a desire to discover her mother’s fate, Milagros uncovers human trafficking between Venezuela and Trinidad, and learns that her mother had been sold into sexual slavery upon their arrival in Trinidad. Though Milagros has grown, the other residents of New Felicity never age, among them the survivors of the 18th-century massacre, who now seek vengeance against two traffickers who run a local brothel; the survivors also save others from oppression by transforming them into birds. Evoking the themes of Ovid, the language of Toni Morrison, and the genre-blending of Octavia Butler, Haynes scales the heights of his ambition. This soaring work is not to be missed. Agent: Ismita Hussain, Great Dog Literary. (Feb.)