perspective, usually a lesser character, but they do not adopt a first person point of view. Major characters Lasirén A great Power of Africa, an lwa, is the fertility god of the Ginen. She is the power of all the waters, and gives gifts of the sea. She is called forth by the mourning of three women after Georgine's stillborn was taken to be buried properly. "I'm born from song and prayer. A small life, never begun, lends me its unused vitality. I'm born from mourning and sorrow and three women's tearful voices" (pg. 40). The novel takes us on her journey as she gets possessed by the main characters Mer, Jeanne, and Thais. Mer describes the goddess as "young, smooth; she was fat and well-fed. The bush of her hair tumbled bout her round, brown, beautiful face in plaits and dreadknots, tied with twists of seaweed" (pg. 64). Mer Also referred to as "Matant Mer" (Aunt Mer) and "Maman" (Mother). She is a medicine woman to her enslaved Ginen people of Saint Domingue. As one of the older surviving slaves on the plantation, the sick and needy look up to her for guidance and herbal cures. She knows her place, and feels that if she “denied to help [her] people, then [her] spirit wouldn’t fly home” (pg. 63). She is the first to be possessed by Lasirén, and is given the duty of finding out why the god's salt roads are blocked. She has a sexual relationship with Tipingee, mother of the house-slave Marie-Claire. She is a hard-worker and listens to the spirits, and awaits the day she can join them and no longer be a slave. "I stick to my work. I do what I’m told. Each day I live is another day I can help my people" (Pg. 67). "Mer always had a strange way of talking about death…about how it was good to leave life and flee away from this place where the colourless dead tormented them daily" (pg. 14). Jeanne Also referred to as "Lemer" and "Prosper". She is an Ethiopian entertainer in Paris. She constantly struggles with her self-worth because of the color of her skin, and often dresses elaborately to make up for its darkness. She has a sexual relationship with another dancer, Lisette, and one with a rich white writer, Charles. She possesses Lasirén after singing old songs of her grandmother. For