“What Storm, What Thunder” By Myriam J.A. Chancy Is 2024 One Maryland One Book Selection

Maryland Humanities has selected “What Storm, What Thunder” by Myriam J.A. Chancy for the 2024 One Maryland One Book program.

The Haitian-Canadian-American author’s novel follows a cast of characters during the 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti. They realize that everything they thought was certain suddenly isn’t, as they endure the chaos of a natural disaster. Readers witness an architect, a water-bottling executive, a drug trafficker, an immigrant cab driver and others in scenes before, after and during the earthquake.

“What Storm, What Thunder” made the shortlist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the longlist for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Chancy’s 2010 novel “The Loneliness of Angels” also made the latter list. A forthcoming novel, “Village Weavers,” is set for release in April.

Maryland Humanities will announce details on the tour this summer and a calendar of free public events, including an author tour, will be available online beginning this summer.

A selection committee consisting of 18 Marylanders — including teachers, scholars, librarians, writers, booksellers and community workers representing 10 counties and Baltimore City — chose the novel for One Maryland One Book. A public call for books under the theme of “restorative futures” garnered nearly 250 titles, from which the committee made their selection.

“The novel takes its title in part from an epigraph by Frederick Douglass,” said Chancy, “himself from the Baltimore area, writing in his essay, ‘What to the Negro is the Fourth of the July?’ in 1852: ‘For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.’ Of course, Douglass was not calling for disaster but for seismic change in America's social order in ways that I believe the reality of the earthquake called for in the Haitian context in more recent years.”

Chancy added, “It is not lost on me that Maryland has been home to many people from what was once called Saint Domingue, from the period of the Haitian Revolution to Douglass's appointment as U.S. ambassador to Haiti from 1889-1890, to the more recent influx of Haitian (immigrants)."

Maryland Humanities CEO Lindsey Baker said, “This year’s One Maryland One Book theme feels important and timely. I’m looking forward to seeing what resonates with Marylanders about ‘What Storm, What Thunder’ and the amazing programming I know our partners will come up with.”