With an insider’s intimacy, author Carine Fabius, in Saturday Comes: A Novel of Love and Vodou, dispels the religious, social and cultural stereotypes and myths shrouding her native Haiti in an atmospheric coming-of-age tale that pits the bourgeois Chenet family against the impoverished Saint Fleurs – their live-in cook Jizzeline and her young daughter Maya. Driven to despair by her abusive employer, Jizzeline secures her daughter’s passage to Miami in a makeshift boat, spiriting the girl away from the monstrous Monsieur Chenet and his son Sylvain, a childhood ally. Washed ashore, near death, and unable to locate her aunt, Maya is adopted by Madame Mirta, a practicing vodou priestess, who teaches her young apprentice the good aspects of the craft. But Maya’s forced estrangement leaves her fixated on revenge against her mother’s tormentor. Summoning Baron Samedi (Lord of Saturday), Maya decides Sylvain must pay for his father’s transgressions.
I loved Saturday Comes’ many distinct and unique voices; and its insightful and original take on vodou and its practitioners, and an (Haitian) immigrant’s sojourn, one that is rarely portrayed with such depth, dignity and sensitivity. Filled with a multicultural cast of quirky characters, you’ll either love or hate Fabius’ tightly-woven, imaginative tale that kept me reading late into the night. Baron Samedi, also known as Father of Death, commanded my attention, and disrupted my dreams, as this story of lust, love, magic and hatred spun out of control. How accurate are the vodou rituals? I wondered. I suspect, or at least I am hoping, there is more in store for Maya Saint Fleur, her brother Lionel, and Detective Valentina Ruiz. Read this fast-paced, page turner with caution, for Fabius is a master storyteller.
A freelance writer, Arabella Grayson’s poetry and short stories have appeared in CounterPunch (The Poets Basement), Konch, Poetry Now, The Walrus, Munyori Literary Journal, Mills Quarterly, 146 Poems of Love (pending publication) and on the Stories on Stage stage. A former writer-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, she also combines her passion for writing and the arts in the touring museum exhibition “Two Hundred Years of Black Paper Dolls.”
