Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou, and Civil Strife in Haiti, By Kathie Klarreich

In 1988, a politically naive, middle class Jewish girl from Cleveland set out from San Francisco to explore the handicrafts market in Haiti.

The Caribbean island had just thrown off decades of one of the most notorious dictatorships in the region. By her own admission, Kathie Klarreich was ill-prepared for the political turmoil she encountered there. Others might have turned right around and gone home. Instead, Klarreich threw herself into the sometimes inspiring but often traumatic events she witnessed over the next decade. In the process, she learned far more than most foreign white women about Haitian culture and politics, becoming what she amusingly calls a "Vodou Jew."

Madame Dread is her engrossing personal account of this self-discovery.

With the exception of the occasional cliche and some stilted dialogue, Klarreich succeeds in pulling the reader along with her on this bumpy journey, thanks largely to her self-effacing honesty. Haiti, says Klarreich, provided her with "a chance to re-examine myself and my place in the world." She describes herself as a child thrust in the middle of a playing field, "ignorant of the rules or even which game was being played."

For all its chaos, Haiti has a habit of casting a spell on foreigners. Klarreich attends a voodoo ceremony and finds herself uncontrollably dancing to the drums and writhing on the ground. "I was in an altered state, but not from alcohol or drugs," she writes. "No feelings any rabbi evoked through any sermon I'd ever heard came close to reaching this kind of religious experience."

As Haiti lurches from one coup to another, Klarreich realizes that there isn't much future in handicrafts. After the first coup, her mother calls from the States and advises her to "get involved or get out." She does neither.

Instead, she falls in love with a Haitian musician and reinvents herself as a freelance journalist. The children in the street nickname her "Madame Dread," after the dreadlocks of her husband, Jean Raymond, a drummer steeped in the African rhythms of Haitian folk music.

Despite her marriage, she remains an outsider looking in, able to observe with a degree of objectivity that is often lacking in writings about Haiti.

The late 1980s are a fascinating time to be in Haiti, as the country struggles with the political transition from the brutal Duvalier family dictatorship to the emergence of a young priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and his "Lavalas" movement.

Some of her leftist friends adopt Aristide as a flag-bearer for democracy, but Klarreich sticks to her newfound matrix as an objective reporter. She is able to see through Haitian politics, what she calls the "merry-go-round of power-hungry leaders," where "everyone, no matter what class they came from, was after money."

Before Aristide becomes president, she meets him at the orphanage he runs. In a bizarre interview, he treats her with disdain and in a violent mood swing fires off a tirade, accusing her of being CIA. Klarreich is reduced to tears. Aristide later apologizes to her (after he is ousted in a coup and exiled in the United States) at a political rally in Oakland, Calif., where Klarreich is invited to speak alongside actor Danny Glover and poet Maya Angelou, both pro-Aristide activists.

Juggling her professional career and her personal life isn't easy.

Jean Raymond, who likes fried spaghetti for breakfast, is uncomfortable on their trips back to the United States. Klarreich masters her husband's native Creole tongue, but he struggles to learn English. Pregnant with their son, Klarreich has to deal with a host of local superstitions regarding childbirth. This includes not telling her parents she is expecting "because if I did the lougawou (werewolf) would suck the blood of the fetus." She opts to give birth in the States.

Getting Jean Raymond out of Haiti is easier than getting Haiti out of Jean Raymond. Klarreich accepts that but wishes he would be a little more curious and accepting of her own culture.

On the day she goes into labor, the Haitian generals seize power again, kicking out Aristide in a bloody coup. By the time Aristide returns three years later on the back of a U.S. military intervention, Klarreich's political education is almost complete. Back in power, Aristide proves a big disappointment. Haiti is fast losing its allure for her. She's a mother now and worries for her son. As Haiti descends into anarchy, Klarreich decides to leave with him. Jean Raymond stays behind. "Whereas I had grown," she concludes, "Haiti had regressed."

- David Adams is the Times' Latin America correspondent, based in Miami. He can be contacted at dadams@sptimes.com

"Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou, and Civil Strife in Haiti," by Kathie Klarreich, Nation Books, $15.95, 368 pages.