Kathie Klarreich, a white Jewish girl from the West Coast, arrived in Haiti as a naove twenty-something in the late 1980s. There she worked for a fair trade organization. Weeks became months, and months became years, as Klarreich, despite the spiraling political violence, became enthralled by the island, its lifestyle and traditions, to the extent that she started to grow dreads, attend Voodoo masses and started to file reports for the Christian Science Monitor and its attendant radio station.
Klarreich saw civil violence, mass slaughter, coups, and U.S. intervention all up-close, and on...