Before Shorty was born, the houngan, a vodou priest, told his mother that her baby had "a fierce soul and would begin and end in blood and darkness."
Shorty, a 15-year-old boy from the slums of Port-au-Prince, is trapped in the ruins of a hospital following the devastating earthquake of 2010. Surrounded by darkness and the dead, with no water or food, his chances for survival seem extraordinarily slim. But in the midst of his isolation and despair, he gradually comes to realize that he isn't completely alone. In some extraordinary way, the spirit of Toussant l'Ouverture, the revolutionary who led the slave uprising in Haiti 200 years earlier, is also with him.
The author tells the parallel stories of the courageous but doomed Toussant--his struggles against the French and English, and his dream of a free Haiti--and Shorty's struggle for his own life and freedom. Lake treats readers to a novel enriched by cultural terms and rhythms, scenes both harrowing and heartbreaking, and a people who have striven, and will continue to strive against overwhelming odds. --Jane Henriksen Baird, public librarian in Alaska