The Road to Makokota

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.

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.