Trapped in the cane fields of Martinique, Adelise, delicate and flighty as a dragonfly, has found a way to keep her hard life separate from her secret soul. But when she is forced to move from her village to Fort-de-France, the island's unruly capital, and her aunt introduces her to the unsavory business of nightlife among the mulatto elite, Adelise must draw on ever more tenuous resources to remain free. Set against the politically charged backdrop of mid-twentieth-century Martinique, the story of this unlikely heroine's struggle unfolds in a language at once precise and enchanting, bringing to life both the inevitable harshness of life on Martinique and its inescapably lush beauty.

Perhaps best known to American readers as a founder, with Patrick Chamoiseau, of the Creolité movement, Raphaël Confiant is the author of several award-winning novels in his native Martinique. Mamzelle Dragonfly is his first novel to be translated into English. Linda Coverdale's many translations include Patrick Chamoiseau's School Days and Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows, both available from the University of Nebraska Press.

"Lyrical yet unsentimental. . . . Set amid the social and political restlessness of a 1950s Martinique clamoring for independence from France, this is a novel about how a girl learns to separate her mind and body from the circumstances and people who threaten to tear her apart. . . . Confiant's searing writing recalls the work of Edwidge Danticat, the acclaimed young Haitian-American author." —Boston Globe