Master your Minecraft  Christian Science Monitor Monday,
November 29th, 2004   The Darling  by Russell Banks  Looking for
someone to save in Africa  A review by Ron Charles  Born in 1821
from a weird union of benevolence and racism, Liberia is the
bastard child of American history. Liberals in the North and
slave holders in the South considered the new African colony
either a just or an expedient place to dispose of free blacks.
Eventually, about 15,000 African-Americans were shipped to the
small coastal colony, where they ruled over the native people in
a fashion not unlike the system back home, driving the country
through crises of debt and corruption that continue today. The
United States, as the conflicted progenitor, has always
struggled to determine an appropriate relation to Liberia --
alternately helping, ignoring, and exacerbating its plight.
Encompassing this mess of tangled history requires an author
capable of bringing it down into the lives of individuals.
Russell Banks has risen to the challeng