In darkness I count my blessings like Manman taught me. One. I am alive. Two. There is no two. Trapped beneath the rubble of the Haitian earthquake of 2012, a teenage boy is terrified, desperate and alone. A child of the slums, Shorty has been drawn into the world of the gangsters who rule his broken city, a world that turns dreams into dust and boys into killers. But Shorty has a secret: a flame of revenge that burns inside him, a flame that fires his resolve to find the twin sister stolen from him seven years ago. In the darkness the line between the present and the past begins to blur and, as Shorty fights for life, his struggle becomes part of a two-hundred-year-old story - a story of courage and betrayal, of freedom and of hope. For Shorty may not be quite as alone as he believes. Sometimes, on the other of darkness, there is only death...And sometimes there is light.