Kirjahaku

The story of Toussaint Louverture and the tragic nation of Haiti that he founded has never been told with such power and imagination as respected historian and master story teller James Baker does in his novel "Sex and Bondage in Three Colors". In this revolutionary book he has created a new literary genre, one critics have called "historical fantasy." History limits itself to known facts. Historical fiction limits itself to creating scenes and dialogue only in places where facts are not known and only if the created scenes and dialogue do not violate known facts. Baker's historical fantasy tells a story of historical figures without limits, setting his fantasy free to soar. This novel ranges over the interconnected lives of such men as Toussaint, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Thomas Jefferson and demonstrates how their distinct and often conflicting visions of the future collide. He describes in delicious detail the sexual exploits, many of them with disastrous results, of white, black, and brown men who break free of their bonds only to be shackled by their desires. There is rape, incest, miscegenation, and unbridled lust as a host of men and women conceive and give birth to our cruel modern world.

Once more Father Columba takes up his pen to record another of his adventures-this time as much a misadventure. Once again he argues with God, encounters colorful characters, and bumbles his way to the solution of a riddle. Having found a missing monk from Melk Abbey near Vienna Austria, he has been ordered to go to Rome to do the same for the Abbey of San Ambrosio. Father Columba, who has been compared to G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, does not consider himself a sleuth, but he has taken an oath of obedience, so off he goes to the Eternal City. In Rome he uncovers still another puzzling dimension of the human dilemma, one that requires him, the host Abbot, and even Pope Paul VI to confront a moral decision none of them has been trained to treat. Once more it seems that Columba is opening doors to a New World. You are in for a treat as you read this memoir by a man who thought at the age of 65 he could retire to read a bucket list of books, only to be called to a new Holy Vocation: solving mysteries for his fellow Catholics great and small. If you like this elderly Sherlock Holmes, you will want to read his other memoirs, set in Oxford Mississippi, Seoul South Korea, the Isle of Iona, and Nashville Tennessee.

Be prepared in the pages of this book to have fresh light cast on the Human Experience-and therefore on the many experiences of your own life. Author James Baker has here collected the stories from his lifetime of adventures to provoke and inspire you by letting you see yourself in them. Baker grew up in the American Southland, traveled and studied in Europe, and taught both in the United States and in Asia. Everywhere he has lived and traveled, he has encouraged people to tell him their stories; he has listened carefully to them and jotted them down; and now, here he shares them with you. His stories of fantasy, escape, tribulations, and ecstasy demonstrate the bonds we humans form with people, places, and events. In them you will recognize the people, places, and events that you have known, hated and loved, feared and embraced. Read them with an open mind and an open heart. The will make you laugh, they may make you cry. They will give you pleasure.