The Farm
It is 1937, the Dominican side of the Haitian border. Amabelle, orphaned at the age of eight when her parents drowned, is a maid to the young wife of an army colonel. She has grown up in this household, a faithful servant. Sebastien is a field hand, an itinerant sugarcane cutter. They are Haitians, useful to the Dominicans but not really welcome. There are rumors that in other towns Haitians are being persecuted, even killed. But there are always rumors. Amabelle loves Sebastien. He is handsome despite the sugarcane scars on his face, his calloused hands. She longs to become his wife and walk into their future. Instead, terror enfolds them. But the story does not end here: it begins. The Farming of Bones is about love, fragility, barbarity, dignity, remembrance, and the only triumph possible for the persecuted: to endure.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Farm
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Golden Oaks is a Hudson Valley retreat where wealthy clients pay poor women to carry their babies under careful surveillance. Filipina housekeeper Jane Reyes signs on as a Host while she searches for her baby cousin's mother.
Multiple novels share this title. The most commonly searched is The Farm by Joanne Ramos (2019), a literary thriller about a luxury surrogacy facility. The metadata above lists Edwidge Danticat in error.
Yes, in concept. The Farm depicts a near-future surrogacy industry that exploits immigrant women. It is widely paired with The Handmaid's Tale and Red Clocks in conversations about reproductive-rights speculative fiction.
The Farm is 312 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Farm takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Farm is a standalone novel by Edwidge Danticat, not part of a series.
The Farm is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.