The Price of Escape-David Unger

The Price of Escape

 

by David Unger

This is a book in which two dissimilar worlds collide: a monumental clash of cultures and desires that persists throughout the book. It starts out with the first misfortune of Samuel Berkow, the main character, whose last city of residence was Hamburg. Though he was a Jew, he considered himself more German than anything. He belonged to the wealthy merchant class and was accustomed to the comforts of life. After Kristallnacht, there were many anti-Semitic incidents that led Samuel's uncle Jacob to insist, and more importantly, finance Samuel's flight from Europe. His destination would be Guatemala City, where his cousin Heinrich lived. It was supposed that Heinrich would get Samuel on his feet. So Berkow sailed to Panama, and from there to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. You could say that Puerto Barrios is the direct opposite of Hamburg in many ways: it is hot, dirty, smelly, backward, desolate, desperate-and many other sad and rundown adjectives that could be strung along with this sentence. Even compared to the rest of Guatemala, it is an area in and of itself. In fact, it is really more a part of the Caribbean, bordered by Belize to the north and Honduras to the south. It is home to many Anglophone blacks or Garífuna, as they are called.

Though seemingly in the background, the United Fruit Company, a US company notorious for taking over parts of Central America and planting banana plantations, was very much a part of Puerto Barrios. In fact, it was responsible for the town’s boom as well its bust. When the United Fruit Company’s operations were headquartered in Puerto Barrios, it was in much better shape, but when the company decided to move inland to Bananera, Puerto Barrios was reduced to a mere port, and it suffered greatly. This gave locals reason to be resentful toward the company and speak poorly of it and spread rumors. There was even an American United Fruit Company employee, the colorful Alfred “Alf” Lewis, who felt cheated because he was stationed in Puerto Barrios when his true desire was to join the management and enjoy the status and salary that he felt he deserved.

You can imagine that Samuel was utterly unprepared for this entire ordeal. In fact, he was. He went through countless tribulations before leaving Puerto Barrios, and in addition to this, having been uprooted from his native Germany seems to have made him reminisce about his melancholy past. Samuel spent many days and many nights trying to get out of Puerto Barrios, and the author has a way of making it seem like he was there for months, when in fact, his stay was much shorter.

 

I like this book because it was simple in design, but always kept me on my toes. I was always asking myself “What is Samuel going to do next?” “What terrible thing is going to befall him?” “Who is going to either cross him or help him?” And perhaps the most compelling question with an equally compelling but cryptic answer: When is Samuel going to leave Puerto Barrios?

I didn’t find myself paging backward to find out something that I had forgotten about the plot. Mr. Unger wrote coherent content and has a style that flows naturally. It is interesting to note that the author was born in Guatemala but raised from a young age in the United States. I followed the writing style carefully to see if there was a hint of Spanish in it, and the truth is that there is not. In fact, I find his grammar, syntax and sentence length to be especially Anglo-Saxon in nature. However, the backdrop is entirely Latin American, and some of the characters fit the bill as well.

 

One last thing I came away with after reading this book is that Puerto Barrios, like any city or town a person has lived in, is an inner as well as an outer experience. Samuel’s version of or experience in Puerto Barrios is much different than Alf’s or that of a visiting American artist who had a great time on the bay. After reflecting on the matter, I really think that Puerto Barrios was Samuel’s own personal hell that he transported from Germany to Guatemala.

 

This book was written for adventure seekers. Though it exceeds your garden-variety dime store novel by leaps and bounds, you won’t have to invest too much of your attention span, which means that you can focus on the adventure, excitement and despair. Furthermore, you can either read it voraciously or during snatches of your free time (on the bus, in the doctor’s office waiting room or before going to sleep).

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