Barnett, Stephen 1954-

PERSONAL: Born 1954, in Zanesville, OH.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, MacAdam/Cage, 155 Sansome Street, Suite 550, San Francisco, CA 94104-3615. E-mail—swbarnett@ucdavis.edu.

CAREER: Editor and writer. Served with Peace Corps in Sierra Leone.

WRITINGS:

The Road to Makokota (novel), MacAdam/Cage (San Francisco, CA), 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Daltrey Run, a novel.

SIDELIGHTS: Stephen Barnett's first novel, The Road to Makokota, draws on his experiences serving with the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. Sixteen years before The Road to Makokota opens, its protagonist, Craig Allan Hammond, an engineer in a developing former British colony, helped build a road into the Sierra Leonean village of Makokota. While working on the road, Hammond fell in love with a local woman, Oussumatu, and had a son by her, but she refused to come back to the United States with him when he left. After sixteen years of rootlessness and bad relationships, Hammond realizes that walking away from Oussumatu was a mistake and he returns to West Africa to find her and his son. However, the nation is in the midst of a brutal civil war, making this a difficult proposition. He searches a refugee camp in a neighboring country first, and, as a Kirkus Reviews contributor noted, the refugee camp "is his first taste of hell." He retreats to a town, where he meets boarding-house owner Madame Nettie and former diplomat Claude Bayeh, characters who add "dimension and depth" to the story with their "festive presences," noted the Kirkus Reviews critic. "The author beautifully details Hammond's physical and spiritual transformation," commented a reviewer for the Curled up with a Good Book Web site. "The man who began the quest for lover and son no longer exists; his mission is rewarded in unexpected ways, certainly not within his experience or expectations."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Bookwatch, April, 2004, James A. Cox and Diane C. Donovan, review of The Road to Makokota, p. 3.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2003, review of The Road to Makokota, pp. 1407-1408.

ONLINE

Curled up with a Good Book Web Site, http://www.curledup.com/ (August 27, 2004), review of The Road to Makokota; Luan Gaines, interview with Barnett.