Ratings5
Average rating3.9
Winner of the 2013 Michael L. Printz Award This is the story of "Shorty"-a 15-year-old boy trapped in a collapsed hospital during the earthquake in Haiti. Surrounded by the bodies of the dead, increasingly weak from lack of food and water, Shorty begins to hallucinate. As he waits in darkness for a rescue that may never come, a mystical bridge seems to emerge between him and Haitian leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, uniting the two in their darkest suffering-and their hope. A modern teen and a black slave, separated by hundreds of years. Yet in some strange way, the boy in the ruins of Port au Prince and the man who led the struggle for Haiti's independence might well be one and the same . . .
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HEAVY SHIT.
This was a compelling book, and I like how it complicated the role of UN aid in Haiti & all of the political turmoil in Haiti. Not... super sure about the voodoo, but... okay.
Summary: This novel features two main characters, Shorty and Toussaint l’Ouverture. Shorty is a teenage boy who discusses his growth and the ways in which his perceptions have been shaped since he was a toddler, and Toussaint is the famous leader of the Haitian slave rebellion who wrestles with the moral choices he is required to make in connection with leading the revolt. The two characters are separated in time by over three hundred years, but they share a mysterious connection.