Hungry Ghosts

Set in 1940s Trinidad, the novel opens with four boys performing a blood oath by a river, forming a pact they call "Corbeau" after the carrion-feeding vulture. The Lakhan twins, Rudra and Rustam, both fifteen, seal the bond with cousins Krishna Saroop, thirteen, and Tarak Saroop, fourteen.

Krishna is the surviving child of Hansraj "Hans" Saroop, a laborer, and Shweta, a devout Hindu woman. The family lives in a sugarcane estate barrack, a decaying structure housing five families in cramped rooms. The barrack sits far from Bell Village, across the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway. Other residents include Tarak and his hard-drinking father, Mandeep; the elder Rookmin; Dolly and her daughter Lata; and a stray dog named White Lady. Krishna attends the Presbyterian school in Bell Village but is bullied for his barrack origins and suspended after retaliating.

Dalton Changoor vanishes from his estate during a thunderstorm, leaving a cryptic note for his young wife, Marlee. Dalton, more than twenty years her senior, is suspected of criminal dealings, and his mental state has deteriorated. He hoards newspapers, converses with a painting he believes houses his dead mother's soul, and recently fired a gun in front of children. After he disappears, his German shepherds die one by one. Marlee tells the estate workers, including Hans, that Dalton left on urgent business.

The novel reveals the Saroops' deepest wound. Their first child, Hema, died before her first birthday after wading in contaminated floodwater inside the barrack. Neither Hans nor Shweta has spoken the name since. The silence has become a curse: Every time they are intimate, visions of Hema's death overtake Shweta. Speaking the name aloud could break the curse, but neither can do it.

Late one night, Marlee finds a dead rat and a ransom note demanding three thousand dollars. Rather than call police, she proposes that Hans stay as a nighttime watchman. When a second note arrives, she doubles her offer to four hundred dollars, enough to fund a Bell Village plot Shweta wants. Hans accepts. Shweta confides her unease to Dolly, who warns that "a man in the day and a man in the night is two different creatures."

Tensions between the barrack boys and the village boys escalate. Mikey Badree, the scarred son of the deputy superintendent, and his friends confront Krishna and Tarak, nearly drowning White Lady. The Lakhan twins retaliate. Krishna and Tarak are jailed but released when Marlee calls in a favor with the police superintendent.

An interlude reveals Marlee's origins. Orphaned in Chaguaramas after the area was demolished for an American naval base during World War II, she worked at a brothel called the Oyster House, where she witnessed her friend Celita murdered by American officers. She fled in the pickup of Dalton Changoor, who took her in, educated her, and molded her into the refined Marlee Changoor through a civil ceremony with forged documents.

As his nightwatch continues, Hans and Marlee grow closer. She teaches him to shoot, and they laugh together in the yard. Krishna secretly witnesses this and is disturbed. When Shweta visits Hans at the estate, their intimacy fails. She spots a ceramic teacup, evidence Marlee has been bringing Hans tea, and the discovery triggers her traumatic visions. Hans tells her coldly, "It is what it is."

On the night of the ransom deadline, Marlee does not deliver money; she drinks and dances alone. The last German shepherd is later killed with a spading fork. After burying the dog, Marlee brings Hans inside the main house for the first time, and they sleep together. She identifies Baig, one of the estate workers, as the letter writer by matching a misspelling, fires him, and prepares to report Dalton's disappearance as a kidnapping.

Dalton's pickup is found submerged in a pond with no body. Hans tells Shweta the lot has been sold and that he will keep working at the Changoor house. Shweta forbids him from returning. Later, Krishna follows his father to the estate and sees Marlee dancing while Hans drinks. When Hans returns home, a violent argument erupts. He insults Shweta, and they come to blows. Krishna lunges at his father. Shweta hurls the ceramic teacup at Hans's head and screams at him to leave.

The twins reveal what happened to Dalton. He came to their shack during the rainstorm, believing they had been sent by their dead father, Bhagran Lakhan, to kill him. Dalton stabbed Rudra with a dagger and fired at them. The twins fled to his pickup. While Dalton banged the revolver against the windscreen, the gun discharged into his own neck. They drove the truck into the pond and left the body for vultures. Rustam warns Krishna to stay away from the Changoor house.

Shweta is admitted to the hospital with tetanus from a festering wound. Robinson, who has quit the Changoor farm, encounters Krishna at the hospital. After her discharge, Hans visits the barrack in unfamiliar clothes. He announces that Marlee will buy a house for Shweta and Krishna but not for himself. When Rookmin confronts him, he grabs her arm, dislocating her shoulder. White Lady bites his calf. He flees.

Meanwhile, Lata begins a romance with Dylan Badree, the deputy superintendent's older son. At the Ramlila, a Hindu festival, Dylan and his friends leave her drunk and alone. She is assaulted but fights off her attackers. Fleeing, she encounters Mikey Badree and strikes him with a rock. The twins and Tarak find the unconscious Mikey upriver; White Lady bites him. Days later, White Lady's dismembered remains appear by the river. Tarak buries her and leaves the barrack for good.

Mikey and a group ambush Krishna and beat him. Krishna escapes clutching Dalton's dagger and flees to the Changoor house, his only hope. He scales the gate and throws rocks at the upstairs window, still holding the blade when the door opens.

A fragmented passage conveys the aftermath: Boys found Krishna's body in the river. Shweta is silent.

At the wake, Marlee arrives on a white mare, offering to take the body to the church. Shweta tells her she has no place here. Marlee mentions Hema by name, revealing Hans shared their secret. Shweta punches Marlee, who falls against the casket. The coffin's waterlogged base tears open, spilling deadwater over Marlee. Hans, who arrived in tears, reaches toward her but walks into the darkness. The crowd chants "Deadwater Lady," and Marlee flees.

The twins capture Hans by the riverside. He confesses that he came out the front door and fired into the darkness without looking, hitting his own son. He claims Marlee put the boy on the horse to take him to the hospital, but Krishna died on the way. The twins suspect Marlee fired the shot, but Hans will not confirm this. They decide against killing him; he will destroy himself.

Hans walks the train line to the river, imagining entering the water. At dawn, Krishna's body burns on a pyre. Inside the barrack, Shweta sleeps with a neighbor's newborn nestled against her chest while Lata stands watch. On a distant knoll, the twins contemplate a journey east, somewhere remote where the past could become prologue. They are not sure such a place exists, but they reckon they will know it when they arrive.