Content Warning: The text depicts racism (including colorism, slurs, and outdated terminology), ableism, anti-gay bias, abortion attempts without the mother’s consent, misogyny, and incest, and discusses sati (a form of suicide), sexual assault (including a case involving an underage character), death by childbirth, child death, enslavement, torture, and murder.

Crossing the Mangrove’s third-person omniscient narrator introduces retired schoolteacher Léocadie Timothée, who takes a different path home and stumbles upon Francis Sancher’s corpse. She becomes ill, as she considers informing families of tragedy a spiritual burden. She goes to the dead man’s house, and meets teenage Alix Ramsaran and his pregnant sister Vilma, who informs Léocadie that her husband had not been home for three nights. Upon learning of Sancher’s death from Léocadie, Vilma sends Alix to inform their father Sylvestre, who is drinking and gambling with other men at the local bar Chez Christian. The men leave the bar to spread the news of Sancher’s death, one predicted by the villagers of Rivière au Sel (“Salty River”) from the start; postman Moïse (or Mosquito) in particular realizes Sancher had been right to fear fate while alive.

Sancher is brought to Vilma’s house by her father and brothers, and almost everyone in the village gathers.