'A powerful and wise novel . . . read this now' – Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me

Before the little girl became a Missing Child, she was Jouvay Marcelin from Flatbush . . .

Serenity Marcelin is still reeling from the recent loss of her beloved mother when she agrees to take her six-year-old daughter, Jouvay, to carnival.

There, in the pulsing heat of the crowd, Serenity loses her grip on Jouvay's hand for a second, and the little girl disappears into the night.

Close to losing hope, the arrival of an ancestral ghost in her small apartment convinces Serenity that the key to this mystery lies in her family's shocking past . . .

Told through three generations of the Marcelin family, and moving from Haiti during the US occupation to the vibrant streets of New York, Backstitch weaves together the intimate secrets of a family with the sweeping history of a nation.

'A novel of extraordinary tenderness' – Nina McConigley, author of How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder