THE RAINY SEASON: HAITI SINCE DUVALIER
by Amy Wilentz; Simon & Schuster
427 pages; $19.95
When Amy Wilentz first visited Haiti in 1986, she expected to find a land terrorized by President-for-Life Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier and his dreaded Tontons Macoutes. As it happened, she landed at Port-au-Prince Airport three days before Duvalier was hustled off to exile in France. Instead of a country bowed under tyranny, Wilentz found one struggling with the uncertainties of revolution.
"Everything was at a boil," she felt, "and I couldn't stay away." Eventually Wilentz quit her job as a TIME staff writer to live in...