Two honorable souls and their trails of light

Judged against cherished American values, Joseph Nosius Dantica was a good man, perhaps even great. He was religious, the founder and pastor of a Baptist church. He was a family man, a father to his biological and several adopted children. At 81, he was the widower of a 55-year marriage. Fit for his age and vital from a "life long habit of walking pretty much everywhere," he was a survivor -- of one cancerous tumor and two cancerous dictatorships. But in the end, three other facts determined Dantica's fate: He was honest. He loved his home. And he was born in Haiti.

"Brother, I'm Dying" is the latest from acclaimed novelist and short-story writer Edwidge Danticat, Joseph's niece. Lest a French surname and the words "family memoir" trigger flashbacks of bleary-eyed Proust cram sessions, rest assured that Danticat's foray into the genre has left her style, marked by poignant vignettes and Caribbean-clear prose, blessedly intact.

Minus a few self-indulgent lapses, "Brother, I'm Dying" is eminently readable and emotionally nuanced. The two Haitian men it features -- Edwidge's father, Miracin, and his older brother, Joseph -- become our own father and uncle. Making sense of how they lived and died becomes our challenge.

Three intersecting events provide the book with its framework. In a span of roughly six months, Danticat's first child was born, her father died of pulmonary fibrosis and her uncle died while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. His bizarre treatment, which included a medic claiming he was "faking" after he had vomited and fainted, is bound to create a stir arriving as soon as it does after the 10th anniversary of the Abner Louima case. But there is more to "Brother, I'm Dying" than a sensational headline.

Like most first-generation immigrants, Edwidge's father lived for his children. He was sustained during decades of menial work, including 20-plus years as a Brooklyn gypsy cab driver, by the dream of seeing his flesh and blood prosper in America. But his own misfortunes never robbed him of a native thoughtfulness that expressed itself in cooking "welcome repasts" for newly arrived immigrants, in buying what gifts he could afford for his children, and in sending handwritten monthly updates to Haiti.

Battling age and distance, young Edwidge trained herself to detect the emotional undertow her father masked with "stilted French" and formal composition. Fast-forwarding to his bleak prognosis, she writes, "We have always been equally perplexed by the fear of breaking each other's heart."

Her Uncle Joseph required his own interpretation. For many years after his laryngectomy, Edwidge's lip-reading skills were his Rosetta stone. When she left Haiti at age 12 to rejoin her parents and two American-born siblings, it meant leaving a second father, a man whose every gesture and expression carried an unspoken word. Thus his truly transcontinental death, beginning with Port-au-Prince gang violence and ending with a request for asylum in America, struck Edwidge with as much force as her father's.

"Brother, I'm Dying" does not find Danticat reaching quite the lyrical strains of her short-story collection "Krik? Krak!" or the narrative elegance of "The Dewbreaker." This would be too much to ask. But it does offer a glimpse into the sources of Danticat's vivid imagery and characters. We see dresses sewn big to grow into. We find a righteous pastor who confronts the Tonton Macoutes, the terror of voicelessness, aged matriarchs with tales to tell, and the casual brutality of absolute power, this time without the fig leaf extended by fiction.

The ancient Greeks believed that in death, gods and heroes were raised to the sky as constellations. In contrast, the children of slaves from Brazil to Haiti were taught that every time a brave soul died, a star fell. Toward the end of her memoir, Danticat reminds us of this, one of the great motifs in the folklore of the African Diaspora. When the next meteor shower rains down, only the heartless would begrudge Joseph and Miracin two of those brilliant flashes.

Richard Thompson is a graduate in history from the University of California, Berkeley.