Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou, and Civil Strife in Haiti. Well written, interesting account of a woman’s life-changing experiences in Haiti. Judging from this latest Reuters story, not much has changed since the author left there a few years ago.

Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles. Working my way through this one. This interesting bio by Raymond Arroyo details the life a woman turned Franciscan nun who overcame amazing hurdles – a cruel, abandoning father, a mentally ill mother, and the entire American Catholic male hierarchy, to name just a few – to found the Eternal Word Television Network and become one of the foremost movers and shakers in modern American Catholicism. I always liked her shows – I found her witty, ascerbic, cunning, intelligent, yet down to earth – and wouldn’t be surprised to see her marked for sainthood one of these days.