Dèy

“Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?” These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami. When she hears gunfire while at a shopping mall, she takes shelter in a nearby restaurant, cowering with fellow shoppers and diners. Once she’s safely home, Magnolia keeps this traumatic event from everyone. But given her life back, she begins to see everything clearly: her extraordinary bond with her daughter, Zoë; her nearly broken relationship with Zoë’s father; the challenges of her mentally troubled mother, whose unraveling patterns Magnolia worries she’s spiraling toward herself; and her father’s affair with a woman who has borne him a child. While struggling through the labyrinth of her past, Magnolia must also come to terms with the losses sustained that life-altering day, and nearly every day by her parents and sibling in Haiti.

Prize history

• National Book Award for Fiction 2026 Longlist

Reviews

• The Guardian · 30 Sept 2026

  Dèy by Edwidge Danticat review – motherhood and trauma in Miami

  The first novel in over a decade from the acclaimed Haitian-American author lacks the power of earlier works

  Sukhdev Sandhu