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 House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood Helene Cooper is "Congo," a descendant of two Liberian dynasties -- traced back to the first ship of freemen that set sail from New York in 1820 to found Monrovia. Helene grew up at Sugar Beach, a twenty-two-room mansion by the sea. Her childhood was filled with servants, flashy cars, a villa in Spain, and a farmhouse up-country. It was also an African childhood, filled with knock foot games and hot pepper soup, heartmen and neegee. When Helene was eight, the Coopers took in a foster child -- a common custom among the Liberian elite. Eunice, a Bassa girl, suddenly became known as "Mrs. Cooper's daughter." For years the Cooper daughters -- Helene, her sister Marlene, and Eunice -- blissfully enjoyed the trappings of wealth and advantage. But Liberia was like an unwatched pot of water left boiling on the stove. And on April 12, 1980, a group of soldiers staged a coup d'etat, assassinating President William Tolbert and executing his cabinet. The Coopers and the entire Congo class were now the hunted, being imprisoned, shot, tortured, and raped. After a brutal daylight attack by a ragtag crew of soldiers, Helene, Marlene, and their mother fled Sugar Beach, and then Liberia, for America. They left Eunice behind. A world away, Helene tried to assimilate as an American teenager. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill she found her passion in journalism, eventually becoming a reporter for the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times," She reported from every part of the globe -- except Africa -- as Liberia descended into war-torn, third-world hell. "Cooper's perseverance and immense talent with language eventually catapulted her into a career as a journalist. Her success at The Wall Street Journal and later The New York Times is nearly as noteworthy as her ability to compartmentalize - or, some might say, dissociate. This mental sleight of hand is what affords her the psychological space to create a new life and cultivate her writer's craft."
--New York Times Book Review  Paperback 354 pages - 5" x 8" - (7/09)
ZC6242 House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African $15.00
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