Russell Banks–THE DARLING
Posted in 9b-2010 Reviews, Historical, Liberia, Literary, Social and Political Issues, US Regional on Jan 23rd, 2011
Recreating the events which led to the catastrophic battles for power which engulfed Liberia from 1980 – 1996, author Russell Banks shows how four different home-grown armies, each with their own goals, aggressively engaged in atrocities to ensure victory for their own side. Employing child soldiers, and killing and maiming anyone who stood in their way, including women and tiny children who simply had the misfortune to belong to the wrong rural tribe, these armies massacred a quarter of a million people and displaced a million others. Banks describes this turmoil through the eyes of a radical American anti-war activist named Hannah Musgrove who arrives in Liberia from Ghana under a false name in 1976. Musgrove is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List for her activities as a member of the Weather Underground, having been indirectly involved in a New York City townhouse bombing in which three people were killed in the late 1960s.
