Rope

It is 1925, under the guise of peace-keeping, the U.S. is ten-years deep into it’s invasion of Haiti. Colvin Donner is the best U.S. Marine tracker and he is sent to capture an elusive rebel hero, Chango Champagne Pepla. Colvin soon discovers the reason why the rebel movement is alive and successful. Consequently, he unleashes a series of inhumane acts that will not only have implications for his personal life but the entire nation when he does capture Chango. After Chango is hung with Colvin’s cursed rope, Colvin returns to the United States only to experience some eerie and unexplainable death phenomena involving the rope. These events drive him back to Haiti where he and his son engage in evangelism. In 1945, Colvin’s son, Robert meets Moiselle, a country girl with dreams of leaving Haiti. She believes that her only option is to marry a foreigner. She and Robert fall for each other, but what they discover about themselves as they try to make a life under the shadow of the cursed rope is more sinister than they could have imagined.

Author Biography

Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel (prefers to be called Ketsia) was born in Port-au-Prince Haiti, currently lives in Homestead, Florida with her three children and husband. She teaches at Miami Dade College. She earned a Bachelors from Tufts University and a Masters in English from University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her most recent publications include “How to Get Up When Your Man’s Been on Da Down-Low” published in Faultline: Journal of Arts and Letters volume 23; “Le Bon Berger” published in So Spoke The Earth, edited by M.J. Fievre. “Kako Blood” in the Caribbean Writer, 2011; “Mercy at the Gate” in Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat, 2011; “Haiti: a Cigarette Burning at both Ends” in Butterfly Ways: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States, edited by Edwidge Danticat, 2001; and “The Mango Tree” in Compost Magazine, 1994. Her children’s books include Momma, How Beautiful you are (2015), Where the Dinosaurs Sleep (2015), Beauty Walks in Nature (2010), Songs from a Tower (2009), Keeper of the Sky (2007), One More Daughter, America (2006), Daughter of the House (2005), A Fish Called Tanga (2003), I’ll Fly Away (1999)