The House at Sugar Beach

“You must read Cooper’s wildly tender memoir. It’s that rarest of things, a personal story that transcends the people, the place, the world it is talking about and becomes a universal tale about the thousands of segregations, small and large, subtle and obvious, that shred all of us. It is beautifully written, utterly unself-conscious, and without a hint of self-pity. Cooper has an un-failing ear for language and a poet’s tender heart. A powerful, important book that will teach you not only something about war and love, race and power, loss and hope, but also a great deal about yourself.” – Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood and The Legend of Colton H. Bryant
“Helene Cooper’s memoir is a remarkable page-turner: gripping, perceptive, sometimes hilarious, and always moving. Her keen eye, fierce honesty, and incisive intelligence open a window on war-torn Liberia, America, and the stunning challenge of a life that straddles these deeply intertwined societies.” – Jeffrey D. Sachs, special adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and author of The End of Poverty
“The tragedy of Liberia – the most American of all the African tragedies – is brought painfully to life in Helene Cooper’s memoir. Her work is an antidote to statistics and headlines and the blur of Africa’s sorrows, a reminder that history and war proceed one family at a time, one person at a time. They are never abstract, always personal.” – Arthur Phillips, author of Prague, The Egyptologist, and Angelica
“Rendered with aching nostalgia and wonderful language – is a voyage of return, through which the author seeks to recover the past and to find that missing sister, even as the war deepens over the years to come. Elegant and eloquent, and full of news from places about which we know too little.” – Kirkus (Starred review)
“Among Cooper’s aims in becoming a journalist were to reveal the atrocities committed in her native country. With amazing forthrightness, she has done so, delivering an eloquent, if painful, history of the African migratory experience.” – Ms. Magazine
“Masterly…. Nothing short of brilliant.” – The New York Times Book Review
“There is tenderness in this memoir, and Cooper is clear-eyed even as she tells of her loss.” – The New Yorker
“To understand what happened in Liberia is to understand what has happened in much of Africa, and Cooper tells it not like a seasoned journalist – which is what she is – but like a poet.” – Entertainment Weekly
“Nearly three decades after fleeing Liberia, Cooper offers an indelible view of her homeland and makes palpable the pain that she felt when she lost it.” – People

Helene Cooper is the Pulitzer Prize–winning Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times, having previously served as White House Correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, and the assistant editorial page editor. Prior to moving to The New York Times, Helene spent twelve years as a reporter and foreign correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of the bestselling memoir, The House at Sugar Beach, and Madame President, a biography of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She was born in Monrovia, Liberia, and lives in the Washington, DC, area.

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