Redemption Road: The Quest for Peace and Justice in Liberia (A Novel)
Elma Shaw swims through the murky depths of Liberia s recent past without holding her breath. She breathes and allows us to breathe through the pain. Her Redemption Road is a story that needs to be told and Shaw handles the emotions, the tragedy, the wounds, and the burden, with delicacy and power. --STEPHANIE HORTON, Sea Breeze Journal of Contemporary Liberian WritingsIn the tradition of Liberian literary greats Bai T. Moore and Wilton Sankawulo, Elma Shaw carves out a period in Liberia's history and transplants it onto paper for the world to swallow and digest without judgment. Redemption Road reminds us of our tragic past but it also shows us that peace, justice, reconciliation, progress, and development are attained if we only try a little harder. --From the Foreword byELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF, President, Republic of LiberiaLiberia could very well enter the canon of post-conflict literature with Elma Shaw's Redemption Road. Peppered with flashbacks, chock full of suspense, and sprinkled with a smidgen of romance, Redemption Road contextualizes the Liberian Civil War with gut-wrenching appeal. It is the story of a nation attempting to recover from untold suffering and carnage, and follows the life of Bendu Lewis, a young woman who runs Peace in Practice - an organization that facilitates healing and trauma counseling for survivors of the Liberian Civil War...Shaw's literary birth of Redemption Road began long before she actually conjured up the manuscript. She penned a poem with the same title years ago as a college student, after discovering that the name of the beachside road where government officials were slaughtered during a 1980 coup was extracted from Samuel Kanyon Doe's political/military faction, the People's Redemption Council (PRC)...The longer novel is as much a tribute to those slain government officials as it is a memorial to the thousands of Liberians who perished during the brutal, senseless civil war. It brings to bear Liberia's tortured history, and civil conflict no doubt, but it also transcends the country's context to ask universal questions about truth, reconciliation, forgiveness, and the power of unconditional love. --ROBTEL NEAJAI PAILEY, Liberia Travel & Life MagazineThe choices that Bendu makes teach lessons in much the way that Chinua Achebe aims at educating his African readers. Shaw has taken an enormously difficult theme and treated it convincingly after laying the horrific groundwork of what happens during time of awful warfare -- especially to women. Atonement and renewal as Shaw develops them are believable and inspiring and exactly what so many potential readers in Africa need during these troubled times. I see Redemption Road finding many enthusiastic readers not only in Liberia, but also in Sierra Leone, South Africa, Rwanda, Congo -- a list that sadly can be expanded too far. --CHARLES R. LARSON, Department of Literature, American University, and author of The Ordeal of the African WriterGreat work on Liberia and its quest for redemption.--Jerome Verdier, Chairman, Liberia's National Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)[Redemption Road] offers a way forward amidst all the ideological divisions about what peace in Liberia should look, sound, smell and feel like.--Bai Best, Daily ObserverAlthough it is a work of fiction, Redemption Road provides valuable insight into the long-simmering causes of the Liberian civil war and offers a prescription for preventing future conflict.--Awo Sarpong Ansu, Jamati OnlineA brilliant novel...a promising and incisive voice. It will go a long way in placing Liberia on the map of world literature.--Wilton Sankawulo, Professor of English and Literature, University of Liberia, and author of Sundown at DawnElma Shaw's novel is a journey back to the ruins of our homeland, where the beauty of culture clashes with the ugliness of war. It is a story filled with both life and death, but throughout Redemption Road, I feel the power of hope in both the storyteller and the novel's heroine. --Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, author of Becoming Ebony and The River is Rising