The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis

This is a big book, 713 pages. But it is a fantastic read if you are willing to put in the time and effort. It took me six weeks to read it. I could take another six weeks and get just as much out of it. The novel consists of five books. The first book is set just after the events of the Humanitarian US invasion of Haiti, in 1995.  Dottie (Dorothy) Chambers is the eponymous woman of the title.  She believes that she has lost her soul or “conscience” after all the dark deeds that she has committed, during her many activities as a covert spy, working mainly for her father, Steve Chambers, who is a spy master with a dark past and intimately complicit in the transformation of Dottie from doting daughter and star student to undercover spy and rouge agent. She is in Haiti to consult with a famous “Shaman” about whether through some dark Voodoo ritual she can be made a whole person again. Of course we know better. Dottie is the most interesting and tormented female character I have encountered since reading “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

We learn through the rest of the other four books about the backstory of Dottie and her father. We visit World War II ravaged Bosnia, the mysterious city of Istanbul in 1986, and finally Haiti. There is also a lot of stuff here about CIA misdeeds and Special Forces shenanigans.

Bob Shacochis was a contributing editor to Harper’s, which sent him to Haiti in 1994 to cover the uprising against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the island nation’s first democratically elected President, and the subsequent intervention by U.S. Army Special Forces, with whom Shacochis traveled for nearly a year covering the invasion.

Booklist 2013 Top of the List “Editors’ Choice Award”.

Joel