Peacekeeping

A dazzling, bravura display of sex, small-town politics and the stifling heat of the Haitian sky, by the National Book Award finalist of Fieldwork. When Terry White, a former deputy sheriff and a failed politician, goes broke in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, he takes a job working for the UN, helping to train the Haitian police. He's sent to the remote town of Jeremie, where there are more coffin makers than restaurants, more donkeys than cars, and the dirt roads all slope down sooner or later to the postcard sea. Terry is swept up in the town's complex politics when he befriends an earnest, reforming American-educated judge. Soon he convinces the judge to oppose the corrupt but charismatic Senateur Maxim Bayard in an upcoming election. When Terry falls in love with the judge's wife, the electoral drama threatens to become a disaster.