23708: (Pub) Hermantin-Miami-Herald-author captures South Florida and its Haitian commu (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Oct. 31, 2004


SUSPENSE


Captain to the rescue

The author captures South Florida and its Haitian community in this
fast-paced thriller.

BY WANDA J. DeMARZO

wdemarzo@herald.com


CROSS CURRENTS.

Christine Kling. Ballantine. 320 pages, $23.95

Strong, assured tugboat captain and sometime-sleuth Seychelle Sullivan
returns in Christine Kling's latest entertaining thriller.

In Cross Current, Seychelle, who first appeared in Surface Tension, becomes
embroiled in a murder mystery after her tug, Gorda, intercepts a dilapidated
fishing boat in the ocean miles from the Broward coastline. Inside is a dead
woman and a young dehydrated Haitian girl named Solange. The child,
waif-like, slender to the point of breaking, tells Seychelle that she was
being smuggled into the country so she can join her American father.

Seychelle, who has problems committing to relationships and just recently
broke off with her latest lover, finds herself drawn to the girl. She
hesitates in calling the U.S. Border Patrol, who would quickly whisk the
child to the Krome Detention Center to await deportation. Seychelle knows
that the United States' ''wet foot/dry foot'' policy would demand the
child's return to Haiti.

So she tows the crippled fishing boat into port and cajoles the Border
Patrol into allowing her to retain temporary custody of the young girl while
she looks for Solange's missing father. She also begins to ask questions
about the dead woman's killer, enlisting the aid of the local Haitian
community, plunging into voodoo culture and uncovering a child smuggling
ring.

Kling vividly details the Haitian community in Broward and the despair of
refugees willing to risk their lives to escape their homeland for a better
life. The book is filled with the richness of South Florida: The diversity
of its people, the changing culture from a ''little dusty, white-bread,
cracker town,'' to a place of color. Religious stores and exotic food
markets dot street corners where tomato stands once stood. And Seychelle
loves the change.

''All these immigrants make this place the town I love. The cultures, the
languages, the religions mix together here,'' she says.

Readers also get a poignant glimpse of a vanishing eastern Broward. Tropical
foliage and parrots color the landscape along the shrinking canals. Mangrove
roots coil high above the water line. Alligators bask in the sun on sloping
river banks, and manatees slowly glide, barely visible, in the murky
waterways.

Kling's prose is strong and authoritative; she writes well about her
familiar, beloved territory. Cross Current is a taut, fast-paced thriller, a
relaxing Sunday afternoon pleasure, that will draw readers into the South
Florida scene, unique in its diversity, coastal geography and beguiling
beauty.

Wanda DeMarzo is a Herald staff writer.


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