In Darkness

In darkness, I count my blessings like Manman taught me. One: I am alive. Two: there is no two. In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, a boy is trapped beneath the rubble of a ruined hospital, thirsty, terrified and alone. Shorty is a child of the slums, a teenage boy who has seen enough violence to last a lifetime, and who has been inexorably drawn into the world of the gangsters who rule Site Solèy; men who dole out money with one hand and death with the other. But Shorty has a secret: a flame of revenge that blazes inside him and a burning wish to find the twin sister he lost seven years ago. And he is marked. Marked in a way that links him to Toussaint l’Ouverture, the Haitian rebel who led the slave revolt and faced down Napoleon to force the French out of Haiti two hundred years ago. As he grows weaker, Shorty relives the journey that took him to the hospital, with a bullet wound in his arm. In his visions and memories he hopes to find the strength to survive - perhaps then Shorty and Toussaint can find a way to be free...

About the Author :
Nick Lake is editorial director for fiction at HarperCollins Children’s Books in the UK as well as the author of two previous novels. Nick discovered Haitian culture as part of his master’s degree in linguistics. He lives near Oxford, England, with his family. Benjamin L. Darcie has been on the stage since he was six years old, performing in everything from musicals to Shakespeare. He drifted from the stage to the screen, acting in and directing short films, as well as doing voiceover work and narration for trailers, films, and audio projects. He currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Review :
“Remarkable... Lake's elegant, restrained prose and distinct characters will reward adults and older teenagers able to brave a story with strong language, harrowing scenes of brutality and an almost painful stab of joy at the end.” "Nick Lake weaves Haiti’s dark past with its painful present into a story that is gripping, moving and uplifting. This novel dances with extraordinary confidence from one era to another, mixing the contemporary with the historical to create a rich and fascinating dialogue across the centuries. In Darkness is stunningly original and hard-hitting." "In Darkness is a serious, nuanced, challenging novel. Trust me, there are plenty of young readers who hunger for exactly that." “A tale of two Haitis — one modern, one historic — deftly intertwine … This double-helix-of-a-story explores the nature of freedom, humanity, survival and hope. A dark journey well worth taking — engrossing, disturbing, illuminating.” "Shorty, 15, is trapped in the rubble of a hospital following the 2010 earthquake that left Haiti in ruins. As time wears on without rescue, he relives the journey that brought him to the hospital with a bullet wound, recounting his life running drugs and gunning down enemies for one of Site Solèy’s most notorious gangs. In a startling but successful feat of literary imagination, Lake (the Blood Ninja series) pairs Shorty’s story with that of Toussaint l’Ouverture, the 18th-century slave who led the revolt that forced out the island’s French colonizers. The narrative is as disturbing (people are hacked to death, an encephalitic baby is found alive in a trash pile) as it is challenging; the book moves back and forth in time from Shorty’s fictional first-person account, shot through with street slang and Creole, to Toussaint’s story, told in third-person. But the portrait it reveals of a country relegated throughout history to brutality and neglect is powerful and moving, as readers come to understand that Shorty is held captive by more than just the ceiling that fell on him."