

Ma Lou has a son, Richard - or, should I say, Richard. SIMON: Ma Lou is the central character, but your novel ties together the lives of 10 people caught up in and/or affected by the earthquake. Chancy, who was born in Port-Au-Prince, raised there and in Canada and now teaches at Scripps College. What to do?ĬHANCY: That's the author Myriam J. We heard our own voices screaming at each other, asking for help, not knowing what to do, faces covered with dust and sweat and other things later to be determined.

Phones rang, and we heard people answer them, then fewer and fewer voices - the tinny, persistent ringing of cellphones tones, different songs rising like wind from underground with no answer. MYRIAM J A CHANCY: (Reading) We heard people on their cell phones all up and down the street begging frantically for help, giving directions to where they thought they were beneath the rubble within the rooms or their houses. Ma Lou, who sells produce in a Port-Au-Prince market, recalls the moment the Earth shuddered. Chancy's novel "What Storm, What Thunder" opens at the moment of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed more than a quarter of a million people and shook up the lives of millions more.
