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Blurb: “A mythic love story set in Trinidad,
Ayanna Ployd Banwo's radiant debut introduces two unforgettable outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead.
n the old house on a hill, where the city meets the rain forest, Yejide's mother is dying. She is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: one St. Bernard woman in every generation must shepherd the city's souls into the afferlife. But after years of suffering her mother's neglect and bitterness, Yejide is looking for a way out.
Raised in the countryside by a devout mother, Darwin has always abided by the ancient Rastafarian vow not to interact with the dead. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when the only job he can find is gravedigging, he must betray the life his mother built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his post, and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger.
Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, an old and sprawling cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both. A masterwork of lush imagination and exuberant storytelling, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding and hopeful novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.”