Excerpt from Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"I'll put her in the band," he hollered into the microphone once Olivia handed it back to him.

"Make her lead singer," Dédé called out from the bar. "She sings better than you, my friend."

Elsie and Blaise had met more quietly at Dédé's five years before. Elsie had walked into Dédé's with an old friend from Haiti, the head of the nurse's aide agency who had helped her get her visa to the United States, mentored her through her qualifying exams, hired her, and put her up until she could afford to live on her own.

The first time Elsie heard Blaise sing with Kajou, she was not impressed. Thrashing his long and limber body around the stage while wearing one of the guayabera shirts and loose-­fitting pants he favored, Blaise kept singing, along with his band, the same bubbly-­type songs and urging everyone to raise their hands up in the air. He would later tell her that it was her look of indifference, and even disdain, that had drawn him to her.

"You seemed like the only woman in the room I couldn't win over," he said while sliding into the empty chair next to her at Dédé's. He never passed up a challenge.

Excerpted from Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat. Copyright © 2019 by Edwidge Danticat. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.