Unsigned first edition book: Cannibal Cousins by John Houston Craige. First edition. NY: Minton, Balch & Company, 1934. Hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, 5.75 x 8.25, 304 pages. Book condition: VG/VG+, with a small ownership notation to first free end page, foxing to top textblock edge, and light toning to the rear panel of the attractive dust jacket.
A sensationalist history of Haiti and voodoo, Cannibal Cousins followed up Craige's debut, Black Bagdad. The front flap promises "fascinating stories of the superstitions of Haitian peasants and the poetic and passionate villainies of the Haitian politicos." The rear flap offers the author's exotic biography: "Two cauliflower ears, a broken nose and a Mexican bullet in his hip are silent testimony to the fact that Captain Craige has been a man of action...he has been cowboy, mule-skinner, Latin American revolutionist, gold miner, professional gambler, heavyweight boxing champion of France—and a newspaperman...As a captain of the U.S Marines, he served for a number of years in Haiti, first as a white officer of black troops in the interior and subsequently as Chief of Police in Port au Prince...He has mastered the Haitian dialects, on which he is authority; he possesses the finest library of old Haitian books and writings to be found off the island; it is doubtful whether any other white man has learned so much of Haiti's inside history."
