Rating: WORTHY!
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
This is an odd book because it comes from a personal account by the author of meeting the young boy who is the subject of this story. Told to her through a translator, it makes a great tale of survival during the Hurricane, named Jeanne, which hit Haiti in September 2004 causing serious flooding and other issues in the city of Gonaïves, which is tucked under the south coast of the northern promontory of Haiti.
The problem is that I have no way of telling if this is true, and neither does the boy. This is the story he told, but there's no way of learning now how well he remembers it, or even whether it may have been augmented by suggestion or by his own imagination over the years. While I have a good opinion of this author and have positively reviewed many of her books, I have to express doubts here. She makes no mention of interviewing anyone who might have recalled finding this boy, which to me calls the reliability of the story into question.
Everyone loves an inspirational story, but all I can say in this case is that it sounds highly improbable, and while it may be true, presenting it as a modern Moses story based on a child's hearsay alone is taking things too far for my taste. Children's minds and memory being as malleable as they are, I have to doubt this and frankly wonder about the motive of a writer who presents a story like this. Because of all these doubts and misgivings, I cannot rate this as a worthy read.
