Book summary

Acclaimed Haitian novelist Edwidge Danticat chronicles the courageous life and tragic end of her uncle, Joseph Dantica (the "t" was added as a result of an immigration error) who raised her until she was 12 before she emigrated to New York to be with her family. Firmly committed to his homeland, Joseph found himself disillusioned with politics and became a community leader and passionate Baptist preacher for most of his life until a battle between UN Peacekeepers and Haitian gangs destroyed his church, forcing him to flee at the age of 81 to seek asylum in the United States. In Florida, while in the cruel custody of the Department of Homeland Security, he went into convulsions, was not given medical attention, and died. Danticat writes with a simple, unflinching prose, milking the material for neither sentiment nor sympathy, but merely showing the hardships suffered by a man who chose to stick with his country even as it slid into chaos, a decision in contrast with that of her father, Joseph's brother, who found a new life in the United States but lost some of his true identity in the process.

Media reviews

"[A] sharply written, exhaustively reported and thoroughly depressing account of 'billionaires, bloggers, and the battle to remake Democratic politics' along unabashedly 'progressive' (read: New Deal and Great Society) lines."