The Bermuda Affair
by Michael A. Scott
Trafford Publishing


"What should I do? See justice, grief or vengeance. I have been conned and coyed. While others laugh upon my head. The future I had built is destroyed in innocence and guilt."

Detailed storytelling and a heartfelt collection of poems come together in a powerful account that describes the profiling, degradation, and subsequent false detention of Jamaican West Indian Michael A. Scott. Telling his story first hand, Scott explains how he was swept up as an innocent bystander and thrust into an undercover operation that was conducted in tandem by the US Customs and Immigration Police and the Bermudan Police. Wrongfully held for twenty-six hours under suspicion of drug smuggling, Scott was left with many frightening details to share about his time in police custody. Chronicling his emotional and physical pain from beginning to end, he begins by recounting a perhaps not so chance meeting with a woman whom he immediately became entranced with. Following a couple of in-person meetings and daily phone conversations, the two made plans to meet in Bermuda, which is when the trajectory of his entire life changed.

Throughout the retelling of his story and his poems, there is a notable and justifiable shift from someone who was once very alive with the promise of love, to someone who was consumed by agony and despair. While unfolding his story of betrayal and love lost, Scott challenges readers to take a second look at the things happening around them that might initially be explained away as coincidences. He worries that the fervor of the war on drugs will lead to the continued detention and arrest of innocent individuals becoming acceptable, commonplace collateral damage. Scott now has a renewed focus, as he continues to try to put the pieces of his life back together and his plans of completing a Doctoral Program in Psychology.

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