In sweet Trinidad and Tobago, they say “you can’t play mas, and fraid powder.” The Savanoy family, veterans of the T&T Carnival stage, knows mas intimately, but the cost of it has never been greater. Crippled by a grief so immeasurable it sucks the joy and colour from waking life, Jeneva – wife, mother and heiress to the powerful masmaking clan – wonders: can hope or light pierce the horizon, ever again? The answer comes in a binder of sketches pressed into Jeneva’s grief-stricken hands. It is the finest work her late brother Remy has ever conjured, but it has been years since Jeneva danced her mas onto a Carnival stage. Burdened by the weight of her mother Gloria’s alcohol-tinged madness, and beset by ghosts whose voices she’ll never hear again, to whom can Jeneva turn? And will her dreams for the resurrection of one, incandescent tribute mas be crushed from within, by hands dripping with jealousy and family secrets? She captured you in Across From Lapeyrouse; and made you clamour for its sequel Santimanitay. Now, in Side By Side We Stand, Nathalie Taghaboni mails you a one-way ticket to Trinidad & Tobago’s resplendent emotional heart. The Savanoys and Maldonados are back like you’ve never seen them before, ready to do battle, and play the most outrageous mas of all – the fierce commess of everyday living. Seasoned with sultry bacchanal, peppered by pot-spoon helpings of humour, flavoured with equal parts desire and deception, Side By Side We Stand is a heady wine of a book, confirming Taghaboni’s perch as a mistress storyteller of our carnival, our people, and our uncompromisingly beautiful land.