Vale of Tears

Description

Vale of Tears is a stark, meditative, and vivid exploration of Coralie Santeuil’s life through a series of flashbacks she has on New Year’s eve as she makes fourteen stops while walking from one end of the busy city of Port-au-Prince to the other in a last quest to save her life and retain her dignity.
Although the novel is set in the period around the Second World War, it is in many ways a book about contemporary Haiti. We pause to wonder what happens to the privileged when their world disintegrates. We contemplate the survival skills of the poor. Vale of Tears offers a critical reading of the class system and corruption which plague the country.
Paulette Poujol Oriol’s unmatched psychological renditions, her extraordinary story-telling talent and masterful prose beguile and outrage, enchant and enrapture all at once.

“This book is a wonderful introduction to Ms. Oriol’s work for English-speaking readers.”

—Edwidge Danticat