Rick Conti

A Slippery Land Rick Conti

Poverty was the only life 15-year-old Fania knew with her family in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but she was happy and her days were peaceful. Her dream of getting an education was about to be fulfilled. All that changed in less than a minute on a January afternoon in 2010 when a devastating earthquake shook Haiti, toppling her entire world. The quake propels Fania on a six year odyssey from an oppressive orphanage, to life on the streets after she becomes pregnant and is banished from the facility, to the harsh life of a single mother in La Saline, one of Haiti's most desperate slums. When a feisty and resilient old widow rescues and befriends Fania, the elderly woman teaches her the skills she needs to survive in the slum in the face of overwhelming adversity. The two settle as squatters on land adjacent to where a school is being built. Fania uses her proximity to the school to undertake a covert education.