A Summer With My Father

A Summer With My Father is about glistening bellies of mapou leaves and witching hour rendezvous with ravenous deities. It's a journey through unquenchable sorrow to the serenity of bathing in the pink coral sea. It's about vehement intent, crushing apathy and fierce compassion.

You may view selected images from the book here: A Summer With My Father.

Please pre-order A Summer With My Father, due out in the summer of 2010, by clicking on the "Buy Now" button below. Each copy is $47.50 and includes shipping in the US. 50% of all profits from book and custom image sales are sent to aid relief work in Haiti.

An excerpt from the upcoming book

Joe refused to flee Haiti even though his brother Jean was openly plotting against Duvalier in the Dominican Republic. When his youngest brother Fred returned from prison swollen, broken and covered in blood; and immediately left Haiti to join Jean, Joe still refused to go, saying that his brother's plans had nothing to do with him. He refused his eldest brother Gerard's desperate pleas to leave Haiti, believing that being a national hero dressed him in armor impermeable to politics. He stayed even though many people warned him that he was going to be arrested because his brothers were a threat to the regime. He told the family that Beauvoir, his good friend since childhood, the chief of the tontons macoute, would give him protection.

Edouard Guillot, Joe's cousin by his sister Matho's marriage to Jean Claude Flambert, and a macoute, stopped by my grandmother, Ti Toto's house at 6:00 a.m. on July 8, 1964 and told Joe's mother that the macoute had been ordered to arrest him. She and Tante Mireille were at Joe's house within minutes. He refused to flee. "I have nothing to fear. I have done nothing. I am an athlete, not a politician. I will not leave my family. I will not leave my country." Ti Toto steadied herself on the edge of the doorframe. She knew he was wrong, she prayed he was right.

Later that morning, Guillot went to Joe's store with two other macoutes. In their company he could no longer speak freely. He was satirically angry. If Joe was there, he wanted to give him time to escape. Joe's mother-in-law had opened the shop and was the only one in. Would she understand his act and keep Joe away from work? Hoping Joe would see it, Guillot left the sign of the tontons macoute on the door as an extra warning and was unnecessarily loud as he instructed the other two macoute to arrest him when he arrived. His mother-in-law had not understood Guillot's attempt to save Joe, and as he drove by she ran out calling to him. He stopped and they grabbed him.

A month before Joe's arrest Duvalier had declared himself president for life. During his regime boogiemen uncles in denim and red bandanas would fill their macoutes with over 30,000 children of Haiti and disappear them for Papa Doc's candy.