The Darling: A Novel

After many years of believing that I never dream of anything, I dreamed of Africa.Over a decade after leaving her three sons behind in Liberia, Hannah Musgrave realizes she has to leave her farm in the Adirondacks and find out what has happened to them and the chimpanzees for whom she created a sanctuary. The Darling is the story of her return to the wreckage of west Africa and the story of her past, from her middle-class American upbringing to her years in the Weather Underground. It is also one of the most powerful novels of the decade, an unforgettable tale of growth and loss, and an unstinting exploration of some of the most troubling issues of our time: terrorism, race, and the contact between the first world and the third.Hannah Musgrave, the narrator of The Darling, tells us she first travelled to Africa in the mid-1970s, to escape prosecution for her radical political activities with the Weathermen. Arriving in Liberia to work in a medical research lab, Hannah also known by her alias, Dawn Carrington meets Woodrow Sundiata, an official in the ministry of public health, and they fall immediately in love. Courting with Woodrow, an intelligent, ambitious man, means encountering his other life in his ancestral village of Fuama a life that could scarcely be more different from Hannahs affluent childhood as the daughter of a bestselling pediatrician. Hannah and Woodrow start a family, but she feels herself to be somehow estranged from her life in Liberia and curiously detached from her husband and three sons. Still in search of herself as her children grow older, Hannah develops a closer and closer bond with the chimpanzees at the lab, whom she calls dreamers.During the early 1980s, Liberian society grows more unstable, until an illiterate soldier named Samuel Doe brutally overthrows and assassinates the president. Hannahs courageous intervention with Doe leads to Woodrows release from detention, but at a price: she must return to the US, leaving her family behind. Hannah feels that her dreamers will feel her absence more deeply than her family will.In the US Hannah briefly reconnects with her parents after years of estrangement before returning to her friends from her underground years. One of them, Zack Procter, is involved with a plan to spring Charles Taylor an attractive Liberian politician from jail, and Hannah involves herself with the plot, genuinely believing that Taylor will bring social democracy to west Africa.Hannah gets permission to return to her family in the mid-1980s, and decides that this time things will be different: she will take charge of her home life, ousting Woodrows young cousin Jeanette, and she will build a sanctuary for her chimpanzees. But Charles Taylor has also returned, and his slow and bloody rebellion against Doe leads, eventually, to a night of horrific violence in which Woodrow is murdered and Hannahs teenaged children disappear. Amidst chaos and almost unbelievable bloodshed, Hannah has time only to move her dreamers to Boniface Island before facing the heartrending decision to escape Liberia, leaving her children behind. More than ten years will pass before she can return to discover their fate, and understand her own.From the Hardcover edition.

set In Liberia And The United States From 1975 Through 1991, the Darling Is The Story Of Hannah Musgrave, A Political Radical And Member Of The Weather Underground.

hannah Flees America For West Africa, Where She And Her Liberian Husband Become Friends Of The Notorious Warlord And Ex-president, Charles Taylor. Hannah's Encounter With Taylor Ultimately Triggers A Series Of Events Whose Momentum Catches Hannah's Family In Its Grip And Forces Her To Make A Heartrending Choice.

the New York Times - Mary Gordon

the Darling Is Not A Perfect Book -- Its Very Expansiveness Of Vision And Range Make That Almost Impossible -- But It Is Admirable, Compelling, Always Surprising And Never Cliched. At The End Of His Chronicle, Banks Takes A Daring Last Step Of Reminding Us That, Despite What She Has Witnessed, Hannah Is One Of The Privileged Of The Earth, ''an American Darling,'' Whose Story, After The Planes Went Into The Towers, ''could Have No Significance In The Larger World.'' These Last Mordant Notes Provide A Brilliantly Sour Decrescendo To Russell Banks's Symphony Of History, Politics And Impossible, Failed Dreams.

"A truly excellent novel. . . . The morbidly fascinating little twists of human existence are all love, sex, life and death, beauty and horrorthe works." Chicago Sun-Times In The Book of Jamaica , Russell Banks explores the complexities of political life in the Caribbean and its ever-present racial conflicts. His narrator, a thirty-five-year-old college professor from New Hampshire, goes to Jamaica to write a novel and soon becomes embroiled in the struggles between whites and Blacks. He is especially interested in an ancient tribe called the Maroons, descendants of the Ashanti, who had been enslaved by the Spanish and then fought the British in a hundred-year war. Despite this history of oppression, the Maroons have managed to maintain a relatively autonomous existence in Jamaica. Partly out of guilt and an intellectual sense of social responsibility, Banks's narrator gets involved in reuniting two clans who have been feuding for generations. Unfortunately, his attempt ends in disaster, and the narrator must deal with his feelings of alienation, isolation, and failure. A New York Times Notable Book • National Bestseller "Russell Banks's work presents without falsehood and with tough affection the uncompromising moral voice of our time. You find the craziness of false dreams, the political inequalities, and somehow the sliver of redemption."—Michael Ondaatje Set in Liberia and the United States from 1975 through 1991, The Darling, from acclaimed author Russell Banks, is the story of Hannah Musgrave, a political radical and member of the Weather Underground. Hannah flees America for West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends of the notorious warlord and ex-president, Charles Taylor. Hannah's encounter with Taylor ultimately triggers a series of events whose momentum catches Hannah's family in its grip and forces her to make a heartrending choice. Hannah Taylor, a political radical wanted by the FBI, flees to Liberia where she befriends the notorious warlord Charles Taylor. When Taylor himself flees to the U.S. to escape embezzlement charges and is thrown into prison, it is Hannah who orchestrates his escape. Years later, Taylor returns to Liberia to foment a bloody rebellion and now Hannah's sons become embroiled in the conflict and she must make heart-rending decisions about the fate of her family Having fled to West Africa in the late 1970s for her work as a political radical, Hannah Musgrave befriends notorious former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who years later leads a rebellion that threatens Hannah's family. Visiting Jamaica, where he is confronted with the beauty, brutality, and social complexity of the island, the unnamed narrator struggles to come to grips with a series of events that frighten and confuse him

Banks explores the complexities of political life in the Caribbean.