All your children, scattered

Three years after fleeing Rwanda, Blanche travels back to begin the slow, difficult work of mending a family in tatters. Her mother, Immaculata, hid in a bookstore basement for months during the 1994 genocide. Blanche's half-brother, Bosco, returned a shadow of his former self after fighting with the rebels, while her husband and son in Bordeaux do not fully understand the legacy of hate that underpins her life. This award-winning novel tenderly unfurls the pain of generations without flinching from the complex legacy of colonization and war. Immaculata, once a chatty schoolgirl who fell in love with a Hutu even though she was a Tutsi, is struck mute by family tragedy after the war. Blanche may speak in French but expresses her sadness and secrets in her mother tongue. Her son, Stokely, raised in France and seeking connections to his mother's homeland, is betrayed by his very blood, inheriting a rare disease. After facing imprisonment, death, and exile, the family struggles to find its footing in a changed world, seeing how their actions echo through the generations.