The Island Sisters is now available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats wherever you get your books. Thank you for reading and reviewing!
Berthelot Morency paints a compelling portrait of four sister-friends who meet pain and tragedy, but carry one another through it with boundless strength, hope, and love. The clink of bangles and their symbol of fierce love and determination will forever imprint itself upon your heart.
Four women from Haiti, St. Thomas, and Guam meet at a college counseling session for first-year students and learn they have a shared history of abuse. Dubbing themselves the “island sisters,” their unyielding friendship is their touchstone across oceans, through labyrinths of forced marriages and violent men, motherhood, and their dreams of freedom.
Strong-willed and hot-headed Monique, quiet and romantic Cecilia, devout Lanei, and determined Ella are four friends who seem to makeup for what the other lacks. But no matter what is happening in their lives or the struggles they face, they share an unbreakable bond of friendship that serves as their anchor, helping and supporting each other through and through.
To succeed, each woman must make choices that will challenge her long-held cultural beliefs, choices that will come with consequences, in the pursuit of her own individual freedom.
An empowering narrative told from alternating perspectives of each friend, Micki Berthelot Morency has crafted four remarkable and hard-to-forget women whose fates are bound together by culture, by history, and most importantly, by a deep, irrevocable friendship. Heartfelt and deeply moving, THE ISLAND SISTERS is an important story about hope and determination.
THE ISLAND SISTERS is now available to order wherever you get your books in hardcover, paperback, and e-book. Soon to be available as an audiobook.
Emotional, thought-provoking, and poignant.
“Emotional, thought-provoking, and poignant. The Island Sisters is an inspiring tribute to friendship, women’s strength to overcome, and the unfurling of possibilities when we start believing we deserve better. Guaranteed to be one of my favorite books of 2023.” –Lainey Cameron, award winning author of The Exist Strategy and host of the Best of Women's Fiction podcast
“The Island Sisters explores weighty themes of abuse, loyalty, faith, and love with raw honesty… You’ll be inspired by this important novel.” –Tracey D. Buchanan, author of Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace
“For many of us, Micki Berthelot Morency’s novel—subtle, insidious, clever—will strike close to home with its exploration of domestic violence, but also of friendship and healing, of women leaning into each other, their stories and hearts joined together. We’ll hold our breaths and feel it all: anger, vindication, despair, relief, compassion. The Island Sisters is so emotionally compelling, it will haunt you long after the twists and turns of its spellbinding plots.” –M.J. Fievre, author of the Badass Black Girl book series
“In Micki Berthelot Morency’s riveting novel, as we follow the women through therapy, life experiences, growth, we can see that help is always available and that victims can become winners.” –Dr. Carolle Jean-Murat, MD, FACOG, author of Miraculous Cancer Remission
“The Island Sisters leaves you rooting for her characters as if they're your kin. Her vivid prose paints an unforgettable portrait of Haitian culture and customs, while imparting wisdom and gripping your heart. This story will linger with you long after you reach The End.” –Stacy Hawkins Adams, author of Watercolored Pearls and The Someday List
“[The Island Sisters is] gripping, poignant and enraging, delving as it does into the often-hidden scourge of physical, emotional, childhood and sexual abuse.” –Waveney Ann Moore, columnist, St Pete Catalyst
“Engrossing, heart-warming, and heart wrenching, The Island Sisters is the story of women who, in finding their tribe, also find themselves. The four women care for and support each other while near and far and illustrate how your true family can be more than the one you were born into.” –Pamela Stockwell, author of A Boundless Place
“Micki Berthelot Morency has authored a compelling novel about an issue we don’t often want to discuss… I hope Ms. Morency is planning a book two. I’d love to read more about this sisterhood because I wasn’t ready to let them go.” –Jacki Kelly, author of Contemporary Romance and Women's Fiction
“The Island Sisters is an absorbing story of love, loss, dreams deferred, and resilience forged alongside four sisters by choice… The book will both enlighten and entertain, and it will heal women who have experienced the worst and yet survived to find the best in themselves, as it pulses to a realistic yet surprising conclusion.” –Kathryn Brown Ramsperger, author of The Shores of Our Souls and A Thousand Flying Things
“The Island Sisters is a plea on behalf of millions of victims around the world whose voices may never be heard... a story of hope, resilience, and of course redemption.” –Ardain Isma, PhD, author of Bittersweet Memories of Last Spring and Midnight at Noon
“While respectful of the differences between Guam, St. Thomas, and Haiti, the author manages to provide enriching insights into some of the shared cultural strains as well as the challenges faced by women from the islands both in their place of origin and when coming to the United States.” –Malve von Hassell, author of The Amber Crane and Alina: A Song for The Telling
“The Island Sisters is sweeping in scope. The landscape the author creates is lush with vivid details of the various island settings. The characters are fleshed out and believable. We want to leap into the pages and fight alongside the victims of unspeakable abuse. The sisters on these various islands, as the author says, are our kinfolk. We know them. We sit near them in classrooms, professional offices, in airplanes; we see them – too often without seeing them.” –Katia D. Ulysse, author of Drifting and Mouths Don’t Speak
"The drumbeats of the islands follow the sisters during their ordeals in Miami—the scented ocean breezes, the flavor of exotic dishes, the perfume of blossoms, the languages of creole, French, and Caribbean English, all related in flowery prose by a talented writer… The Island Sisters is as informational as it is entertaining, a page turner, hard to put down." –David C. Edmonds, author of Lily of Peru and The Heretic of Granada
THE ISLAND SISTERS, formerly titled FOUR WOMEN TALKING was a finalist in the RISING STAR CONTEST sponsored by Women Fiction Writers Association (WFWA). It tackles the issue of domestic violence.
Domestic violence (DV) transcends age, race, gender, education, socioeconomic status, physical/mental abilities. There are a lot of voiceless victims of DV out there, but we live in a country (USA) where the topic is not taboo anymore. Resources are available for victims when they’re ready.
In some cultures, DV is taboo and condoned by societal mores, religious beliefs, poverty…Even when these women emigrate to more open societies, they tend to carry their cultural “baggage” with them. They can be mainstreamed in other areas of their lives, but they will cling to an abusive relationship particularly if the abuser shares the same cultural background because they have witnessed their mothers, grandmothers, neighbors etc…being abused with no recourse and no consequences to the abuser. Sometimes these women can no longer define what is considered abuse.
THE ISLAND SISTERS defines it in all its many facets.