Massacre River

"In communities nestled along a border drawn in the blood of history, Haitians and Dominicans have lived as one people for generations. In 1937, when Generalissimo Trujillo - "the Lord of demented death" - orders the slaughter of all "Haitian devils," a monstrous raptor appears in the sky over the little Dominican town of Elias Pina, brooding a nightmare. Desperate to stop the carnage and save his Haitian wife, Adele, by rallying his co-workers, Pedro Brito sets out into the dawn - and so begins a tale unlike any other, where machetes can fly, severed heads demand justice, towns are flooded by "the foaming filth of genocides," the wind thinks it's a radio, and a word will literally cut throats. At the heart of this kaleidoscopic drama is the loving and sensual bond between Pedro and Adele (a love they bear "the way a watch carries the time"), tenderly evoked in language of astonishing inventiveness by a narrative voice that can turn on a dime, careening through young romance, heartbreak, skin-crawling evil, and Looney-Tunes madness to a tumultuous, breathtaking finale worthy of Hieronymus Bosch."--BOOK JACKET.