“Liberia could very well enter the canon of post-conflict literature with Elma Shaw’s Redemption Road. Peppered with flashbacks, chock full of suspense, and sprinkled with a smidgen of romance, Redemption Road contextualizes the Liberian Civil War with gut-wrenching appeal...It brings to bear Liberia’s tortured history, and civil conflict no doubt, but it also transcends the country’s context to ask universal questions about truth, reconciliation, forgiveness, and the power of unconditional love.”

— Robtel Neajai Pailey
LIBERIA Travel & Life Magazine

“Elma Shaw swims through the murky depths of Liberia’s recent past without holding her breath. She breathes and allows us to breathe through the pain. Her Redemption Road is a story that needs to be told and Shaw handles the emotions, the tragedy, the wounds, and the burden, with delicacy and power.”

— Stephanie Horton
Sea Breeze Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings

“Shaw has taken an enormously difficult theme and treated it convincingly after laying the horrific groundwork of what happens during time of awful warfare —especially to women. Atonement and renewal as Shaw develops them are believable and inspiring and exactly what so many potential readers in Africa need during these troubled times. I see Redemption Road finding many enthusiastic readers not only in Liberia, but also in Sierra Leone, South Africa, Rwanda, Congo—a list that sadly can be expanded too far.”

— Charles R. Larson
Department of Literature, American University
and author of The Ordeal of the African Writer

“A brilliant novel...a promising and incisive voice. Elma Shaw knows how to tell a story. Reading Redemption Road was a most refreshing and enlightening experience, and the best Liberian novel I have ever read. It will go a long way in placing Liberia on the map of world literature.”

— Wilton Sankawulo
Professor of English and Literature, University of Liberia,
and author of Sundown at Dawn

“Elma Shaw’s novel is a journey back to the ruins of our homeland, where the beauty of culture clashes with the ugliness of war. It is a story filled with both life and death, but throughout Redemption Road, I feel the power of hope in both the storyteller and the novel’s heroine.”

— Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
Author of Becoming Ebony and The River is Rising