DEATH OF THE SOCCER GOD

Gilbert Chevalier, the (fictional) Haitian-born hero of the 1950 U.S. World Cup soccer team, recounts the story of his brief, mostly charmed life while at death’s door.

Gilbert, “aka Gil the Voodoo Child, aka Kid Haiti, aka Le Walking Heartbreak…Le Savoir,” is several years removed from shocking the world with his game-winning goal during the U.S. team’s upset of heavily favored England when he faces a firing squad in Fort Dimanche, “the worst place to be in Haiti.” His execution day climaxes years of imprisonment under the brutal dictatorship of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, among whose lovers is Gilbert’s estranged wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of an exiled Nazi. As you can tell, Gilbert’s life is complicated; there are many women, including the love of his life, Aurélie, who was engaged to Gilbert’s brother when he began his romance with her shortly after marrying Elizabeth. By that time, Gilbert is a soccer prodigy who must forsake the Beautiful Game when he leaves for New York City in the late 1940s to study economics. While there, he rooms with the already celebrated trumpeter Miles Davis and learns much about life, love, money, and the varieties of American racism clotting the streets like weeds. Football rudely reenters Gil’s life when a soccer ball slams into his face as he’s walking through Central Park. He starts playing his way back to his youthful virtuosity and, though he never becomes an American citizen, he is recruited to join a patchwork Team USA for the 1950 World Cup competition in Brazil, where fame and still more complications await, leading to his fateful run-in with Papa Doc. Inspired by the real-life saga of soccer legend Joe Gaetjens, this follow-up to Léger’s debut novel, God Loves Haiti (2015), plays fast and loose with chronology, conflating historic personalities and events so much as to flirt with flagrant anachronism. Yet, like its predecessor, the novel moves with lyrical, imaginative force, especially in its vivid evocations of soccer play, while also showcasing the author’s penchant for orchestrating funny and poignant romantic interludes.

A historical novel that merrily dances and jukes its way across the pitch of time.