Join thousands of other Marylanders at one of the many book discussions and related programs
happening around the state this fall for One Maryland One Book! All One Maryland One Book events
listed are open to the public and FREE!

This year, join us as we read What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy!
“At the end of a long, sweltering day, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-
au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters
affected by the disaster—Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret
daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a
small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner,
Dieudonné, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant
musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP
camp; her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who
haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all.
Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular,
stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an
unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.”

Myriam J. A. Chancy is the author most recently of the novel Village Weavers (Tin House). Her previous
novel, What Storm, What Thunder, was named a best book of the year by NPR, Kirkus, Library Journal,
the Boston Globe, and The Globe and Mail ; shortlisted for the CALIBA Golden Poppy Award and Aspen
Words Literary Prize; longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and the OCM Bocas Prize; and
awarded an ABA from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her past novels include The Loneliness of
Angels, winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature Caribbean Award in Fiction; The Scorpion’s Claw; and
Spirit of Haiti, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize’s Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean.
She is also the author of several academic monographs, including Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on
Unnatural Disasters and Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women. Her recent writings
have appeared in Whetstone Magazine, Electric Literature, and Guernica. She is a Fellow of the John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and HBA Chair in the Humanities at Scripps College in
California.