Most first-time travelers to Haiti would consider arriving days before a coup d'etat an issue of poor timing. But for Kathie Klarreich, it opened the door to a new life and career. Klarreich, a handicraft store manager in San Francisco, arrived in Haiti in 1988 on a three-month sojourn to explore the country's signature arts and crafts trade. She left 10 years later a seasoned political journalist, the wife of a Haitian musician, and mother of a Haitian son. She documents this singular evolution in her engrossing memoir Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou and Civil Strife in Haiti.

The memoir opens with Klarreich's suspenseful narration of getting caught up in the gunfire near the National Palace during the military ousting of then-President Henri Namphy. Rather than hiding out fearfully in her hotel room and awaiting the next available flight out of the country, she takes on the role of impromptu reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and Pacifica Radio. Back at home, she soon decides to return to Haiti because of the opportunity it offers to truly know herself. "I was still the same Kathie, born to privilege, but for the first time in my life I was confronting the elements. Haiti didn't have a comfort zone I was familiar with and challenged me in a language I didn't understand. Gracious as the country was, there were no footholds for me to latch on to."

Klarreich, who had previous little journalism experience, is refreshingly candid about her early struggles to gain a foothold as a journalist on the Haitian political scene. Her initial sense of inadequacy among the professional international journalists who frequent Haiti reads real. In describing the charged situations she encounters, she also offers a fascinating look into the dangerous work of foreign correspondents. Readers wishing to inform themselves about Haiti's recent political history will gain new insight as she adeptly charts her growth into a skilled negotiator of Haiti's tangled political webs during the newsworthy 10-year period that included another attempted coup, and the dramatic events surrounding the election, ousting and return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide through a U.S.-backed intervention.

As informative as Klarreich's recount of Haiti's political scene is, the book's best moments are packed into the scenes depicting her personal relationship with and subsequent marriage to complex and passionate Haitian drummer Jean-Raymond. Just as she must learn to negotiate Haiti's ever-shifting political terrain, Klarreich struggles with loving a man whose passionate moods are deeply rooted in the country's cultural and social terrain. Her descriptions of Jean-Raymond's primal connection to Haiti are most poignant during their trips away. The longer an extended stay in San Francisco with Jean-Raymond and their newborn son lasts, the more Jean-Raymond suffers emotionally from the lack of physical contact with Haiti and the meaningful contexts that shape his life.

Just as riveting are her descriptions of the cultural norms -- both American and Haitian -- that separate them. "I didn't delude myself that the differences in our backgrounds, education, culture and economics were going to disappear magically as we fell deeper in love. It was inevitable that each of those factors was going to present its own set of problems, but I was unable to see how difficult a road it would be to find the right balance between our worlds." In choosing to "step over or around" these challenges rather than getting "stuck smack in the middle of them," Klarreich displays the most dominant quality that living in Haiti cultivates in her: resiliency regardless of surrounding circumstances.