Archive - June 8, 2012

Cooper’s Promise by Timothy Jay Smith (Program Consultant: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine and Armenia) iUniverse, $15.95 209 pages April, 2011 COOPER’S PROMISE (reviewed on July 15, 2012) In Smith’s debut novel, a former American soldier hiding out in a small African country can’t escape the ghosts of his past. Sgt. Cooper, an Army deserter, spends his days in Lalanga drinking cheap gin in a dive. He makes a promise to Lulay, a young girl who sells herself each night, to someday take her away. What little money Cooper makes comes from buying smuggled diamonds from a blind boy and his sister, and turning a meager profit at an Arab merchant’s shop. There, he meets the merchant’s son, Sadiq, with whom he becomes quickly enamored; he longs to accidentally run into him at a local hammam (a bathhouse and massage parlor). But Cooper’s life is confounded by a strange . . .