The Dew Breaker

One of the book's face pages mentions that the "Dew Breaker" is actually comprised of many shorter stories, some of which were previously published independently of one another in various journals. It takes an artist to blend these discrete stories, string them together as chapter titles, making them cohesive so that the reader understands a larger picture. Danticat does this with style, with escalating tension, and by drawing the reader into a maze of facts, characters and their personal stories with similar characteristics. All their lives have been touched by the reigns of terror under the Haitian dictators, Papa Doc and Bebe Doc Duvalier. The novel opens with the Dew Breaker's telling his beloved daughter of his background. Prior to the confession, he had been the tortured...not the torturer. And, following this confession, the story moves back and forth in time. One very clever touch, among many, is the portion where the Dew Breaker, now a respectable barber living a very quiet life in New York attends Christmas Eve Mass with his daughter and wife, Anne. Ka, his daughter, stares at a man she thinks to be a wanted man in Haiti. His picture appears on posters all over town because of his human rights violations. In the end, noticing the suspect bears an overall resemblance to the criminal, but is not an exact match, the reader is drawn to the fact that her own father, the Dew Breaker, altered his own appearance so as not to be recognized. He was formerly described as a very large man. No more. A parallel to the man in the pew? Going along with this strain of disguises, the bridal dress seamstress is also sure the Dew Breaker lives across the street from her but when a nosy reporter attempts to look into the house, a neighbor tells her no one has lived there for a long time. When this is pointed out to the seamstress, she relates that no matter where she moves, he finds her. How? Because she tells her "girls" (the various women who utilize her dressmaking skills) when she is moving. That's how the Dew Breaker knows. Is this accurate? Her imagination, grown out of her own story of horror when the Dew Breaker tortured her because she would not date him? Then there is Anne, his wife, who has known her husband's story for many years and has willing collaborated in her husband's obscure existence in order to keep a very low profile. They have no friends, cannot risk ever being recognized, seem to operate exclusively in a Haitian neighborhood. Which begs the question, wouldn't the probabilities be even greater that a criminal would heighten the chances of his recognition in a smaller neighborhood where so many have been touched by the regimes of the Duvaliers? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that if the personification of horrors lives and works just down the street, a victim would be less likely to stir up a hornets nest! Nonetheless, Anne too, was touched by the Dew Breaker. Her own stepbrother was murdered by him yet

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.

Given the subject matter of The Dew Breaker, the story of a killer in Haiti who has "given in to the greatest hazard of the job... It was becoming like any another job," Edwidge Danticat has taken an enormous emotional and aesthetic risk by choosing to tell his story from his daughter's sympathetic point of view. Ms. Danticat also displays her story telling gifts by two astonishing twists in the plot and her capable handling of a central trope that reveals even as it hides the past of one of its central characters. In The Dew Breaker, Danticat has succeeded in showing us that love, even for a monster, can have redemptive effect. And while Ka Bienaim's father can never fully accept the grace offered to him by Anne, his wife, and Ka, his daughter-he destroys a statue of himself that was a gift from his daughter-he does live a reformed life after he leaves Haiti. The Dew Breaker is a sublime work and the tone that Ms. Danticat maintains throughout the work captures the moral dilemma of the "hunter and the hunted." It is easy to want revenge for horrific acts that have been done to our loved ones. But killers have families and children who love them, and they are in desperate need of the kind of salvific love that Anne offers. This humane novel is an act of bravery that may bring life back to the "dead spots" of Haiti's troubled past.