The book jacket describes this as “an astonishing true-life epic”, and that’s true. But it also feels endearingly small and personal, straight from the heart of the child and young woman the author was. It’s not, as I expected, mostly an indictment of US immigration employees questionably detaining – essentially jailing-- a sick, elderly Haitian man – though it certainly lays out what was probably stupidity and bias accompanying.

It’s more the story of what happened after the author was left behind in Haiti as a four year old (just old enough to clearly remember wrapping her arms around her mother’s legs at the airport, and the pain) when her parents emigrated to the US. It’s the admiration and tie the author felt to her uncle (the “Brother” of the title) and aunt who parented her those early years, and how those ties continued and flourished through separation.

It’s also the story of Haiti - beautiful, often dangerous, ravaged in large part by other countries’ actions, bad policy, or inaction. It also shows why living in Haiti could be preferable in many ways to life in the US.