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The Road to Makokota

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Africa is a chameleon, constantly changing in an attempt to survive the vicious attacks on natural resources that spell doom for a people who have become fodder for militant power plays.

Craig Allan Hammond, a black American, returns to Africa to reclaim the young woman he left behind, Ossumatu, and their son, Abu. It is sixteen years since he participated in a road-building project and the Africa Hammond remembers no longer exists. This once familiar landscape is scarred by violence and civil war that has decimated the population, leaving vast camps of sick and starving people waiting to die. The land is a killing field, where warring factions slaughter each other without discrimination or conscience. In the time before his return, Hammond searched for love and found none, only to realize that he walked away from the one woman he loved years ago in Africa.

Hammond buys passage with an entourage of gunrunners heading toward Makakota, the village where he last saw Ossu and Abu. For a price, Hammond joins the raggedy caravan, along with a Polish nurse, in spite of the danger inherent in traveling with such a group in a lawless land. When the situation turns violent, Hammond and the nurse barely escape to the bush in a stolen vehicle. Barnett describes this harrowing journey in chilling detail, as Hammond is stripped of everything he owns, pared down to an intimate awareness of unremitting agony and the unraveling of past beliefs and self-serving assumptions.

On a personal journey that is intensely graphic, reality is almost literally peeled away from Hammond, as he struggles through days and nights of delirium. Images and memory haunt his dreams and he stumbles again and again, refusing to surrender to the darkness. Hammond finds his physical and spiritual epiphany in the arms of Africa, a harsh but loving caretaker. The man who began the quest for lover and son no longer exists; his mission is rewarded, but not within his experience or expectations.

This is a transforming novel, the protagonist unflinching in the face of evil, wading through disaster after disaster until he reaches a blessed respite. In this world, for each atrocity there is the promise of deliverance. In the Road to Makakota, author Barnett reaches beyond what is humanly possible to a state of grace, of peace, his writing lyrical, sensitive and painful. Like the protagonist, the reader cannot comprehend this distant, troubled continent without staring into a terrible, dark reality. On the other side of this journey is the transcendent beauty of a people and place relentlessly pounded into oblivion, yet shimmering with life like a mirage. Luan Gaines/2004.

Set in a war-ridden former British colony in present-day West Africa, The Road To Makokota by Stephen Barnett is a novel of Craig Allan Hammond, a black American who embarks upon a journey to find the wife and son he left behind sixteen years earlier. Accompanied by a Polish nurse, Craig combs refugee camps and plunges ever deeper into a land wracked by bloodshed and strife, learning that it is impossible to find what his soul needs most unless he is willing to pay the ultimate price. Deftly written by a gifted novelist of the first order, The Road To Makokota is a gripping novel and very highly recommended reading.

Last week something amazing occurred for only the third time in our 13-year marriage--my husband and I read and gave five-star reviews to the same book.

I knew something was up when Marcelo stopped in on his way to work to pick up the copy I had reserved at our local library. When he came home that evening, I saw a piece of paper inserted about 30 pages into the novel.

"What's with that?" I asked, pointing.

"I thought I'd read just a few words during my lunch break," he said. "Now I can't put it down! Do you mind waiting until I've had a chance to finish reading the book?"

I was more than intrigued. Marcelo almost never reads fiction, unless it is well researched and written with truth. Having read the book twice, once by myself and a second time to discuss its subtleties with Marcelo, I know that The Road to Makokota is both.

Set in present-day West Africa, the book's protagonist is in danger from the first page--from himself and those around him. Craig Allan Hammond has returned to the country, where he built a road 16 years earlier, to search for the woman and child he left behind. Hammond had been able to keep track of them through the letters Kuyateh, an old friend, sent to the States, one every year. Now even those have stopped, and civil war is tearing the country apart.

For the last decade and a half, Hammond has been living in trailers, moving every couple of years and working jobs that don't mean anything to him. He drinks too much, he smokes too much and he's known too many women but not enough love. When his mother dies, it hits him--leaving is the only thing he's gotten good at.

Consumed with fear, guilt and shame, Hammond needs to find Oussumatu Turay and their son, Abu, and bring them out of the killing zone to safety in order to save himself. But if their fate is similar to other villagers, his son likely has died while fighting with one of the child armies while Oussu was murdered after being brutally tortured and raped.

After several days of searching the refugee camps, Hammond has to accept the offer of one-time diplomat Claude Bayeh to buy passage with a group of gunrunners heading toward Makakota, the village where he last saw Oussu and Abu. His traveling companion is Katya, a Polish nurse who has been working in the camps and has her own secrets to hide.

Hammond doesn't lose his will or ability to love others, even though he still must learn that you can't always deny and avoid troubling times, as this is the only way to learn certain lessons and receive the gift of a life now richer in meaning. He also must learn that when you don't forgive yourself, you also hurt those around you.

Author Stephen Barnett is a master at describing Hammond's journey in chilling detail, in plotting a narrative that is full of subtleties and symbolism, and of developing layers of meaning that are open to interpretation. Barnett also is gifted with the ability to select the right words to convey a meaning. A sampling of some of the book's strongest lines includes:

"You think you're just going to show up in hell, ask a few questions and split?"

"People usually have real simple reasons for doing things. They just make them sound complicated."

"You can kill a man only once, but you can rob him every day of his life."

"What you see isn't necessarily the truth."

"A man is no more than what he is looking for."

"Just as a great silk-cotton tree casts a great shadow, a great evil casts a great good."

"I was afraid of life ... (of) who I really was under what everyone thought I was."

"You are not a believer. You must see and know."

Barnett's writing is philosophical, stark and gritty, concise and pithy, and graceful and lyrical. He excels in building suspense while making you think and wonder.

If you like novels with an intense, taut storyline that suggest things--that leave scenes unwritten and things unsaid so that you can grow along with the protagonist--The Road To Makokota is both a gripping novel and highly recommended reading. Its surprise ending will keep you thinking and believing.

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