Simon & Schuster/Touchstone (USA) Official publication date: September 6, 2005 ISBN 0743270983 Buy a copy now: Amazon.com BN.com Books-a-Million Powell's

Voodoo Lounge a novel, by Christian Bauman "Rich in character and detail...Bauman writes with precision. The prose in Voodoo Lounge reverberates in the white space around it. A strong, compelling work." -Robert Stone, author of Damascus Gate and Dog Soldiers "Culturally alluring, politically charged...a love triangle plays out amid a memorable cast whose nicknames alone -- Jersey, Snaggletooth, Riddle, Shrug -- hint at the crazy distortion and damage that even a so-called 'little war' occasions." -Lisa Shea, Elle magazine (an Elle Recommended Read) "Writing that borders on the dazzling." -Tucson Citizen "The opening days of the US invasion of Haiti serve as backdrop for this visceral second novel. With action shifting from army boat to missionary ship to a hospital administering care to patients with HIV, Bauman reveals three lives entangled in a web of desperation and desire. [The characters] develop like a Polaroid portrait, with devastating details emerging on each succeeding page. The term 'voodoo lounge' refers to the machine-gun nest on the port bow of a ship. Reading this startling novel is the literary equivalent of standing watch on that perch." -Allison Block, Booklist (Starred review) "[Bauman has written] a female voice that rings so true that it makes me want to hunt down every person who ever raved to me about how well Wally Lamb 'got' women in She's Come Undone and force them to read this book. Any woman who has ever worked in a field predominately occupied by men should find something to identify with in Bauman's Harris -- and be grateful that most of us don't have to live with our male coworkers. What is so immensely valuable about Bauman's writing is that he manages to write about life in the modern military without romanticizing it, vilifying it, or turning it into some cheap Tom Clancy thriller. As a result, in a time when the gap between those inside the military and those outside seems to have never been greater, the average reader can gain a better understanding of what it means to be a soldier." -Jen Crispin, Bookslut.com "An intensely atmospheric novel, devestating and immediate. Christian Bauman is a writer with a voice all his own: passionate, energetic, and unfailingly honest." -Regina McBride, author of The Nature of Water and Air and The Land of Women "When our generation started writing about war, we looked back to Heinemann, O'Brien, and Wolff. When the next looks back, they'll be looking to Bauman." -Joel Turnipseed, author of Baghdad Express "Shrapnel flies when a female sergeant and a disgraced soldier reunite during the 1994 invasion of Haiti. Bauman writes with the authenticity that only comes from someone who's been in the shit." -Details magazine (Details What to Read, fall 2005) "A depth-charge of a love story." -East Bay Express, Berkeley, CA (Best of 2005) From the cover: Tory Harris and Junior Davis were in love -- a fierce, drunk barracks love that finally exploded in deception and betrayal. When their paths cross again it is the opening days of the U.S. invasion of Haiti -- the strangest of America's "little wars" of the 1990s. Rooted in the inner struggles of its characters and the weight of their secrets, Voodoo Lounge is the story of addiction in a triangle: Harris, a young, driven sergeant, the only female in her detachment; Davis, the disgraced former soldier whose tragedy burns all it touches; and Marc Hall, a Haitian-American intelligence officer sent to occupy his mother's homeland. The Los Angeles Times compared Christian Bauman's writing in The Ice Beneath You to that of Tim O'Brien and Thom Jones, and with a precision and subtlety of language Bauman surpasses himself here. In living, detailed portraits, the novel segues through an army boat, an old missionary ship, the depths of a Haitian prison, and a squatters camp built in the shadow of an HIV hospital. Voodoo Lounge emerges as a novel of longing and love, excess and bareness, of betrayal flowing in the blood, and the cold, blind passion for redemption.

WXPN Live From the Kelly Writer's House with Michaela Majoun October 2005 (interview and reading from Voodoo Lounge) link

{News/Home}

{Biography}

{Contact}

{Army Boats}

{Links}