Cover image of "Devil Makes Three," a novel about the aftermath of a coup in Haiti

Three decades ago, a military coup overthrew Haiti’s popularly elected young president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, after less than seven months in office. Former CIA Director George H. W. Bush, now President, set the CIA in motion to keep the military in power and prevent Aristide’s return. But it all changed with the election of Bill Clinton the following year. With US help, the populist former priest returned to office three times over the next decade—until the military intervened again each time. And award-winning novelist Ben Fountain conjures up the violence and constantly shifting balance of forces in his explosive tale, Devil Makes Three. Set in Haiti over the course of two years beginning in 1991, the novel conveys with brute force the harsh reality of life in one of the world’s most violence-prone nations.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Four young people experience the coup in Haiti

To anchor his story, Fountain introduces us to a quartet of young characters. Two are American, two Haitian. Matt Amaker is a rootless college dropout who opened a scuba diving business with Alix Variel, the son of a wealthy and prominent Haitian family. Alix is unfocused and always up for adventure, unlike his sister, Misha Variel. Haitian-American due to her birth in the US, Misha is a PhD candidate in French literature at Brown University. And Shelly Graver is a CIA officer working under diplomatic cover in the US Embassy. She’s part of the CIA team dispatched to Port-au-Prince to engineer and support the coup. And Shelly’s interaction with the other three is a central thread in the plot that weaves its way through the uncoordinated violence unleashed by the coup.

Devil Makes Three by Ben Fountain (2023) 544 pages ★★★★★

Photo of the late Haitian dictator, Francois Duvalier, the forbidding presence that hangs over the 1991 coup in Haiti depicted in this novel
For fourteen years until his death in 1971, this man operated a reign of terror in Haiti unmatched even in the country’s history of violent upheavals. François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, led the Tonton Macoute, a secret death squad, that indiscriminately murdered the regime’s enemies. His son, “Baby Doc,” ruled in his stead until 1986. Today, half a century after Papa Doc’s passing, the shadow he casts on Haitian society is still palpable. And it’s clearly visible in Ben Fountain’s novel. Image: YouTube

The men in charge in the Haitian coup

Surrounding these four central characters is a large cast of other prominent actors. Most notable among them are two:

  • General Romeo Concers, commander in chief of the Les Forces Armées d’Haiti, the FAd’H, and now president of the country. Concers himself comes across as a decent man, but not those he commands. They conjure up memories of Papa Doc‘s spectacularly violent death squads, the Tontons Macoute. In fact, many of the men in the FAd’H are former Macoute.
  • The CIA Chief of Station, identified only as Lorenz. He rides herd on the gaggle of thugs the Agency has dispatched to Haiti. With just one exception, a Mormon officer known as Baby Jesus, they treat Shelly with derision and subject her to a running course of sexual harassment. Except that Shelly is having none of it, and she gives as good as she gets. She’s also a lot smarter than any of them.

A sprawling supporting cast

Other characters play important supporting roles in Fountain’s drama:

  • Tommy Rittenhouse, an American expat who owns and runs a popular restaurant. With long experience in Haiti, he serves as Matt’s sounding board and source of bitterly acquired wisdom.
  • A swarm of Haitian military officers, most prominently two colonels in constant conflict with each other.
  • Vodou (“voodoo”) priest known as Duvie, who teaches Shelly about his religion, so widely misunderstood in North America.
  • A Haitian physician, Jean-Hubert, who runs a profoundly underfunded hospital and several clinics. There, Misha Variel goes to work as a volunteer, stalling her return to Brown.

Throughout the novel, Fountain displays more than passing familiarity with both Kreyòl, the local language (spelled Creole in English), and of Vodou. And he’s clearly done his homework about the hunt for sunken Spanish gold off Haiti’s coast, which plays an instrumental tole in his story. So does the CIA’s underhanded role in manipulating Haitian politics. All told, the author paints a fascinating picture of a country in turmoil at a key inflection point in its history. Because the 1991 coup in Haiti was a fateful turning point, setting the stage for seemingly endless violence in the years ever since.

Historical footnote

Few Americans are aware of the great debt we owe to the people of Haiti. Or that the Haitian nation gained its freedom in a war of independence much like our own. Beginning in 1791, a year before George Washington served his first year as President, the people of Haiti, mostly slaves, defeated the French, and later the British and Spanish as well. It was the world’s first successful slave revolt. And that thirteen-year-long effort drained the French treasury and its leaders’ resolve. Thus, in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte called it quits—and sold the vast Louisiana territory to the new United States for $15 million. The money would finance Napoleon’s ultimately hopeless wars in Europe. But the land the US gained doubled America’s reach across the North American continent.

About the author

Photo of Ben Fountain, author of this book about the 1991 military coup in Haiti
Ben Fountain. Image: Thorne Anderson – HarperCollins Publishers

Ben Fountain was born in 1958 in Chapel Hill and grew up in the tobacco country of eastern North Carolina. He earned a BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a JD from Duke University School of Law. He briefly practiced real estate law before turning full-time to writing, and no wonder. Nearly everything he’s written has won literary awards. Fountain’s 2012 novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel was later adapted into a feature film by three-time Oscar winner Ang Lee. Devil Makes Three is Fountain’s third novel. He lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife of 32 years, Sharon Fountain.

This is one of The 21 best books of 2023.

Previously I reviewed the author’s marvelous earlier novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (A war hero and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders in a funny anti-war novel). I’ve also reviewed another novel about Haiti, The Comedians by Graham Greene (Haiti’s reign of terror in a classic Graham Greene novel).

For another perspective on this novel, see the New York Times review by Francine Prose, “After a Coup in Haiti, Looking for Treasure and Finding Trouble” (September 26, 2023).

You might care to check out other books on similar or intersecting themes at:

And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.