A Wedding in Haiti

February 13, 2012
In this quirky, familial account of a dotty road trip she and her husband made to attend the Haitian wedding of one of her coffee-farm workers, novelist Alvarez (Saving the World) offers a moving homage to the Haitian people. Although living in Vermont, Alvarez and her husband, Bill, owned a coffee farm in the mountains of her native Dominican Republic and hired Haitians, like the young man Piti, to care for it while they visited back and forth from the U.S. Making good on their soon-regretted promise to attend Piti’s wedding, suddenly scheduled for August 20, 2009, the couple rearranged their plans and return to the Dominican Republic to make the long, perilous road trip across the border to what might as well be a faraway country, even though Haiti shares the small island. Along with a guide and other helpers, their pickup truck packed with supplies, the team set off via nearly impassable northern roads to reach the northwest Haitian town of Moustique. The trip involved encounters with Haitians that forced a deepening of understanding between the two parties—relations between the neighboring countries have always been tense, Haitian workers discriminated against in the Dominican Republic, and suspicions raw—while the wedding among people of rich piety and startling poverty was jarring and affecting. Nearly a year later, after the devastating earthquake struck Haiti, Alvarez resolved to return to Haiti with Piti and his homesick new bride: Alvarez’s account sounds an urgent need for a humanitarian reckoning between the haves and have-nots.

April 1, 2012
A memoir by acclaimed novelist and poet Alvarez (Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA, 2007, etc.) about her pre- and post-earthquake travels around the island of Hispaniola and the Haitian boy who inspired them. The author met Piti, a young migrant worker from Haiti, in 2001, on a chance visit to a coffee farm that bordered the one she and her husband owned in the Cordillera Central mountains of the Dominican Republic. Alvarez took an immediate liking to this "grinning boy with worried eyes" and began a friendship with him. She became close enough with him that she made a pledge that she would go to Haiti on the far-off, future day when he would marry--without ever thinking that she would be called upon to make good on her promise. In 2009, she received a surprise call from Piti telling her that she was invited to his wedding. Alvarez almost declined, but her attachment to the young boy won out and she and her husband returned to the Dominican Republic. As she traveled across the border, she experienced an epiphany: Haiti, though so close to her native Dominican Republic, was like the beautiful, tragic "sister" she had never fully understood. Eventually Piti called on Alvarez again, this time to help him care for his extended family in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Taken together, the author's trips to Hispaniola represent an interrupted, but no less powerful, voyage that forced her to confront her darkest imaginings. A warm, funny and compassionate memoir.

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February 15, 2012
Alvarez and her husband own a coffee farm in her native Dominican Republic and first met the hardworking Piti, a Haitian immigrant, when he was just a teenager. He was a grinning boy with worried eyes, and Alvarez's maternal instincts went into overdrive as she struck up first a friendship and then a working relationship with the charming young man. That's how she found herself on the way to his wedding in Haiti in August 2009. There were many obstacles along the way, including bad to nonexistent roads, bureaucratic red tape, and a few heated arguments with her spouse, yet Alvarez found herself greatly moved by the spirit of a people who live in one of the poorest countries in the world. Revisiting Haiti in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake, so that Piti and his wife can check on their families, she sees firsthand the skills needed for survival: endurance, how to save by sharing, how to make a pact with hope when you find yourself in hell. Her unaffected prose and her warm and caring voice make this intimate introduction to a troubled country one many readers will savor. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Prolific and popular author Alvarez, perhaps best known for In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), turns to nonfiction with this empathic look at the ills of Haiti, to be heavily promoted both in print and online.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)