Archive - March 25, 2013

Lure of Service: My Peace Corps Adventures at Middle Age By Diane Shugrue Gallagher (Cape Verde 1990-92) Self-published, Gallagher Associates, $16.95 257 pages 2012 Reviewed by Barbara E. Joe (Honduras 2000-03) The cover of this book stands out because of a lovely color photo of a smiling blond woman, her pale arms outstretched over a group of bare-chested dark-skinned children gathered under a giant baobab tree. It graphically represents both a contrast and conversion of cultures. Like me, author Diane Gallagher was inspired by President Kennedy’s Peace Corps’ message in 1961, but wasn’t able to go just then. In 1990, four children and a divorce later, she finally took a leap of faith, joining the Peace Corps at age 53 and enduring the skepticism of family and friends who suggested that a weekend in Vermont might do as well.  She was sent to Cape Verde, a small Portuguese and Creole-speaking . . .