The Dew Breaker

The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat.

This book is about a family of Haitian immigrants living in New York. The father worked as a prison guard in Haiti and is the eponymous Dew Breaker of the novel. The book consists of interrelated stories, and slowly the daughter of the dew breaker discovers how her parents met, and why her father is called a dew breaker. I'd read one of the chapters - the one where the mother and father meet again after a separation of seven years in New Yorker or the Atlantic or similar such magazine. The story just stayed with me, even though I forgot the author's name. When I read this book and found that chapter in it, I was so thrilled. It was like greeting a long forgotten friend.

A colleague of mine and I were discussing this book and she said "this woman can write her ass off". I can't think of a more apt thing to say. There is such an underlying richness to the book. Very highly recommended.

(Review crossposted in LibraryThing)