The Dew Breaker (Large Print) [Hardcover]

EDWIDGE DANTICAT (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2004

In Haiti during the dictatorial 1960's, the man known as the "dew breaker" was a torturer. Now an American and a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, he maintains a quiet life as a husband and father. His terrible deeds lie burried.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: RB Large Print; Large Print edition (2004)
• ISBN-10: 1419303589
• ISBN-13: 978-1419303586
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,302,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti in 1969 and came to the United States when she was twelve years old. She graduated from Barnard College and received an M.F.A. from Brown University. She made an auspicious debut with her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, and followed it with the story collection Krik? Krak!, whose National Book Award nomination made Danticat the youngest nominee ever. She lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gave me new understanding of Haiti over the last 20 years, May 8, 2004

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dew Breaker (Hardcover)

This young Haitian-American writer is making quite a name for herself. In this, her fourth novel, she again displays her depth of understanding of her people. She writes clear, sharp, poignant sentences that go straight to the heart. And the story, itself, is chilling.

The book is episodic and can be looked at a series of short stories. But they're all interrelated, and tell the story of Haiti over the past twenty years. A "dew breaker" is a prison guard who tortures the captives in his charge. And he is the central character in the book. He now lives in Brooklyn and has a loving wife and a grown up daughter. He now works as a barber and his past seems a long time ago. We see him through his daughter's eyes as he reveals his true past to her. The daughter loves her father but this new fact about his life is hard to accept.

We also meet other Haitian people, living in America. There's the nurse who sends most of her paycheck home to her mother. There's the young man who brings his wife to this country. There's another man who travels back to Haiti to visit his dying aunt. There are three Haitian women learning English and sharing their stories with each other.

Eventually, we flash back to the story of the "dew breaker" in Haiti. It's not a pleasant story but yet a very human one. Even though we don't forgive, we do understand.

I was a little reluctant to read this book. I thought it would have detailed horrors and be excessively brutal. I was glad that Ms. Danticant, in her wisdom, spent most of her time on character development and story. She only put in a few of the horrible details, mostly focusing on the people, rather than on the gore.

The book is only 242 pages long, a fast read. It left me with a deep understanding of Haiti, its people, and what is going on in the news today.

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Atonement...was possible and available for everyone.", August 18, 2004

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dew Breaker (Hardcover)

Author Danticat introduces her story of Haitian immigrants and the lives they have escaped in Haiti with the story of Ka, a young sculptress whose parents think of her as a "good angel," her name also associated symbolically with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Ka is in Florida with her father to deliver a powerfully rendered sculpture to a Haitian TV actress. Ka's father, who served as the model for the sculpture, however, destroys it, confessing tearfully that he is not the man his daughter has always believed him to be, and admitting that the disfiguring scar on his face was not the result of torture in a Haitian prison. He was "the hunter," he says, and "not the prey," one of the "dew breakers," or torturers, who as part of the Tonton Macoutes, committed political assassinations and inflicted unimaginable tortures on orders of dictators Francois Duvalier and his son "Baby Doc" between 1957-86.

In a series of episodes which resemble short stories more than a novel in form, Danticat illuminates the lives of approximately a dozen Haitian immigrants as they remember this traumatic period "back home." As the "novel" alternates between past and present, it is told from disparate points of view--those of Ka's mother and father, a young man visiting Haiti after ten years to see his blinded aunt, a wedding seamstress in New York, a Haitian-American reporter investigating a possible "dew-breaker," a man remembering a Haitian friend's long-ago disappearance as he awaits his son's birth in New York, and a popular Haitian preacher whose arrest affects lives for many years.

The novel gains much of its power from the horrors of vividly described torture and the overwhelming fear engendered by the Tonton Macoute militia. By calling up such emotionally charged memories and presenting them in a series of episodes, the author can let the personal stories unfold without having to order events so that they lead to a grand climax. What distinguishes this "novel" from a short story collection, however, is the repeating motifs that appear throughout these seemingly separate episodes (a man's widow's peak, a woman's fear of cemeteries, for example), and by the end of the novel the connections among all the characters become obvious. A vivid documentation of many of the worst human rights abuses of the century, Danticat's novel is a moving testament to the Haitians' resilient spirit and a celebration of their survival. Mary Whipple

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A legacy of horror, March 31, 2004

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dew Breaker (Hardcover)

Throughout The Dew Breaker, evil prevails in all its manifestations, particularly in the guise of authority, demanding homage from the persecuted. This novel is beautifully constructed; characters fall into place within the chapters, the infinite connections that bind one life to another clearly drawn. In each facet of her story, the author builds the momentum in this cautionary tale of horror, love, rebelliousness and hope, touched with myth and memory.

As the novel begins, a young woman gazes upon her father with eyes of love, unaware of his past. Finally confessing his carefully hidden secret, he is revealed as deeply flawed, his actions virtually unforgivable. The scar he wears on his face carries a terrible history, his life in America built on deception. In his mouth the truth is a lie. Although the father pardons himself, there are many who damn him for the monster of their nightmares.

Weaving through the chapters, we learn of those who have been touched by brutal dictatorship and oppression, where unmarried women bear fatherless children, eking out the most basic existence. Haiti, an island paradise, turns into hell under a despot's reign of terror, freedom a vague dream, while the hungry scratch for garbage, all under a starlit sky of infinite beauty. Even when these characters find a different life in America, they carry the indelible scars of Haiti in their hearts.

This passionate novel is an assemblage of powerful interrelated stories; here a chorus of voices hums, the heard and the unheard, the "disappeared", the unborn, the women whose voice boxes have been surgically removed, the desperate murmur of prayers, the eternal silence of the dead and the staccato of random gunfire. There is a staggering contrast between good and evil in The Dew Breaker, as well as the grinding reality of a world made suddenly transcendent in the bright rays of the morning sun. Horrifying, how evil walks so freely through the world, casually touching its victims, then casually strolling into the quiet evening and a peaceful existence, unexposed and unrelenting. Luan Gaines/2004.