Book Reviews

  Learning Peace: Stories from My Time in Peace Corps Ethiopia Krista  Jolivette (Ethiopia 2018-2020) Independently published August 2020 298 pages $9.99 (Facebook), $4.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by James W. Skelton, Jr (Ethiopia 1970-72) • Krista Jolivette has penned an unusual book about her 21 months of Peace Corps service as a teacher in Ethiopia from 2018 to 2020.  I expected it to be a memoir, but the Preface reveals something different altogether. There, Krista writes about unpacking her things when she got home (in March 2020, she was evacuated from Peace Corps Ethiopia due to the coronavirus pandemic), and shares her vision for the book as follows: “And that is what I’ve done here in this book — gradually unpacked my Peace Corps experience for you . . . in a way that is both honest and vulnerable . . ..”  Then she discloses that she tried to write one . . .

  Africa Memoir by Mark G. Wentling (Togo 1970-73) Open Books Publisher 255 pages August 2020 $9.99 (Kindle); $21.95 (Paperback) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) • I’ve read and reviewed several of the author’s books over the years. We were both Peace Corps Volunteers in Central America and worked in West Africa, although Wentling went on to work and travel in 54 African countries over the years. My favorite book from his African Trilogy is Africa’s Embrace, which is fiction but reflects his experience working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa in the 1970s. The well-developed characters force the reader deep into the heart of Africa. Wentling worked with USAID and the State Department, so his book, Dead Cow Road, is an authentic and compelling work of historical fiction that focuses on the U.S. response to Somalia’s 1992 famine. Somalia is one of the most challenging, . . .

  Juror Number 2: The Story of a Murder, the Agony of a Neighborhood Efrem  Sigel (Ivory Coast 1965-67) Writers Press Publisher 146 pages November 2020 $19.00 (Hardcover), $15.95 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Dick Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) • This valuable short book about the author’s experience with the New York City criminal justice system is more like a long New Yorker article than a book.  But that’s fine  — it’s the kind of well-thought-out and well-written reporting you get drawn into and read all the way through and know afterwards that you’ve learned something. Picked as a juror in a trial involving a Bloods vs. Cripps double homicide outside an East Harlem public housing project, Sigel becomes puzzled over why Abraham Cucuta has gunned down two other young men during a supposed gang truce in what starts out as a friendly dice game. It becomes clear during the three-week trial . . .

  The Couscous Chronicles — A Peace Corps Memoir Richard  Wallace (Morocco 1977–79) Self-published July 2020 260 pages $14.95 (paperback), $0 (Kindle) Reviewed by Liz Fanning (Morocco 1993-95) • I loved this book. The Couscous Chronicles: A Peace Corps Memoir was a delightful trip down memory lane just when I needed it most. Hard to say if I would have enjoyed it as much if I hadn’t served as a PCV in Morocco myself, 20 years after Richard. I imagined a similar memoir written about a vastly different place, like Vanuatu, Namibia or China, and yes, I believe I would have enjoyed it just as much! Maybe even more, because I would have learned a ton. For me, this book was an important acknowledgment of the power of the Peace Corps — I the friendships, experiences, and the earnest good work that is universally synonymous with “PCV.” I’ll keep my dog-eared . . .

Relicarios: The Forgotten Jewels of Latin America By Martha J. Egan (Venezuela 1967-69) Papalote Press 175 Pages September 2020 $75.00 Hardcover Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) • Soon after I agreed to review Martha J. Egan’s new book, Relicarios, the Forgotten Jewels of Latin America, I had second thoughts about doing it. How could I, who have strong political opinions about the Conquest of Latin America by Spaniards and the consequent oppression of indigenous populations, be open enough to the material to give it an objective consideration? I still vividly recall arriving in the colonial city of Quito, Ecuador in March of 1964, where I witnessed the subjugation of Indians in the streets, soon discovering that they were literally considered untouchables, as they reflexively covered their hands with their ponchos if I reached out to shake theirs. It was caste-mandated that they do so. Still, I went forward with . . .

  An Indian Among los Indigenas: A Native Travel Memoir by Ursula Pike (Bolivia 1994–96) Heyday Books 240 pages April 2021 $26.00 (Hardcover) Reviewed by Rich Wandschneider (Turkey 1965–67) • My two-year Peace Corps experience ended with a 20-kilometer minivan trip from our Turkish-Kurdish village to the train station in the city of Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey. When my village partner Barb and I got to the platform with our bags and boxes, other minivans showed up with a dozen or more of our village friends. The picture of that leaving and the faces and dress of some of those villagers have been fixed in my mind for 54 years. Ursula Pike’s new Peace Corps memoir, An Indian among los Indigenas, brought 1967 rushing back. There are many important things about this book, but let me tick off three: one, Ursula is a fine writer, with a fine eye for . . .

  101 Arabian Tales: How We All Persevered in Peace Corps Libya By Randolph W. Hobler (Libya 1968-69) Self-Published 444 pages August 2020 $22.99 (Paperback) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) • I’m always drawn to reviewing memoirs from Peace Corps volunteers. What makes this one unique is that it is a collective memoir garnered from interviews of over 100 Libyan Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. I can’t imagine what it must have taken to accumulate this information from so many fifty years after the fact, so I asked him. He sent me a bibliography with lists of people he contacted, books he’s read, interviews he’d made and emails he’d sent. He kept a diary as did his editor (a 76 pager) not to mention close to 60 letters containing information and some of the stories he brought to life in his book. The opening quote alludes to the interesting . . .

published in The Interculturalist, a periodical of SIETAR USA Two Peace Corps Memoirs: Nine Hills to Nambonkaha by Sarah Erdman; and The Ponds of Kalambayi by Mike Tidwell. Reviewed by Craig Storti (Morocco 1970-72).   The column this month is the 2nd half of a two-part look at the writings of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs). We believe that the inherently cross-cultural nature of the Peace Corps experience—hence of the books RPCVs write—will be of interest to SIETAR members, many of whom are themselves RPCVs. In the September column we looked at the website that promotes, publicizes, and in some cases publishes the work of RPCVs; in this column we review two RPCV memoirs. The Peace Corps experience is about as close as you can get to the quintessential cross-cultural experience. The core elements of a classic Peace Corps assignment—you learn the local language (often very local), you get sent to a remote village, you . . .

  From These Broken Streets: A Novel Roland Merullo (Micronesia 1979-80) Lake Union Publishing 376 pages November 3, 2020 $14.95 (Paperback) Reviewed by Richard Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) • A gifted and versatile author of 24 books, including 18 works of fiction, Roland Merullo has now produced a historical novel that’s a humdinger, as suspenseful, revealing, and involving as any World War II fiction I’ve ever read. In his acknowledgments, Merullo describes visiting Naples with his family and being surprised to learn of a successful four-day uprising against Nazi occupation in 1943 and then being moved to write about this remarkable but little-known popular revolt. He created this deeply researched and powerfully told tale in under a year, an amazing feat. In September of 1943, Mussolini has been strung up, leading Fascists are in hiding, an armistice has been declared, and the Italian army is melting away.  But the Germans are . . .

  Poetry Sketches: A Peace Corps Memoir Eldon Katter (Ethiopia 1962 – 1964) Peace Corps Writers June 2020 266 pages $10.48 (paperback) Reviewed by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965-67) • In his evocative memoir artist Eldon Katter  made me want to learn to sketch with a pen as well as with words. Katter is able to do both and has been doing so beautifully for the last 50 years or so. He had the foresight to chronicle his time in Ethiopia and his subsequent travels with short poems and line drawings, both his own drawings, and those of his students. Individually they are interesting, and together, the drawings paired with the poems, they are wonderful. Katter was in the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers to go to Ethiopia, and had the good fortune to be assigned to the Teacher Training School in Harar, Ethiopia, along with 19 other Volunteers, “doubling . . .

  A Hundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike (El Salvador 1966-68) Beck & Branch Publishers 316 pages 2018 $9.79 (Paperback),$4.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia 1965-67) • Idealism fitted to pragmatism, with the inevitable conundrums and conflicts for balance in the personal as in revolution, is the bedrock of John Thorndike’s novel A Hundred Fires in Cuba. The novel is a love story. Camilo Cienfuegos is a real historical person, and Clare is a fictional American photographer and mother of Cienfuego’s (which translates as a hundred fires) illegitimate daughter. Clare is the passionate flame of their affair; Camilo’s passion is the Cuban revolution. As one of Castro’s main comandantes, he was appointed, after the fall the dictator Batista, head of the national army, a conglomerate of ragged rebels and Batista’s defeated troops. Camilo and Clare’s affair began in New York, where Camilo, an illegal, worked in a restaurant’s . . .

  The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale by Kathleen Stocking (Thailand 2006-07; Romania 2010-12) Stocking Press 384 pages’ January 2016 $19.95 (Paperback) Reviewed by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965-67) • The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale is an ambitious title with reverberations from Theodore Parker and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. coupled with the expectation of going where you aren’t necessarily comfortable. It is also a big book for a collection of essays, 384 pages, 5 sections: California, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Home. These are not exactly parallel divisions: a state, three continents, and then Stocking’s home, the tiny village of Lake Leelanau, a knuckle on the skinny finger of land, Leelanau Peninsula, that juts into the northeastern waters of Lake Michigan. But it works. It works extremely well. For some reason I started at the end, which I never do, and read . . .

  Havana Odyssey: Chasing Ochoa’s Ghost by Stephen Murphy (HQ Staff 2002-03) Self Published 296 pages July 2020 $17.95 (Paperback), $8.49 (Kindle); Reviewed by Sean Sullivan (Liberia 1970-72; staff 1970-76) • It took Odysseus 10 years of incredible adventures to make his way back to his home in Ithaca after winning the Trojan War, as the ancient Greek writer Homer relates. It took Stephen Murphy 10 days to return home after his epic journey in Cuba, as he recounts in his fascinating new book, Havana Odyssey: Chasing Ochoa’s Ghost. Both books, the former written 2500 years ago, the latter 25 days ago, mix fact with fiction and hold the reader spellbound. Fact: Murphy had a brief affair in 1989 with Cuban dissident Ana Sanchez when they met while he was the U. S. Information Agency’s TV director in Washington DC. Ana was the niece of Arnaldo Ochoa, Cuba’s most decorated and . . .