Archive - January 2014

Iracema’s Footprint (Peace Corps novel) by Bernard F. Blanche (Brazil 1965–67) Eloquest Books $21.95 460 pages April 2010 Reviewed by Deidre Swesnik (Mali 1996-98) Think Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets John Grisham. Throw in a touch of John Wayne and you’ve got yourself Iracema’s Footprint. Iracema is both the name of an Amazon warrior and the name of the village at the center of the book.  Like the villagers who spend every night in the town square circling round and round the towering statue of Iracema, the main characters swirl around in a current of dizzying misunderstanding throughout the story. At the beginning of the book, we arrive in the village of Iracema on a bus with Marcus. He’s a twenty-something community health worker from Sao Paolo going to this remote town in Brazil’s Northeast region. Soon after his arrival, he meets Ben, the local Peace Corps Volunteer. The metropolitan Paulista . . .

Where were you a PCV and what were your years and assignment? I was a PCV in Liberia I from 1962 to 1964, teaching junior high and high school social studies at Suehn Industrial Academy, a mission boarding school run by African American missionaries. Tell us a little about your background. I grew up in Lakewood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, and got my BA in History at the College of Wooster, also in Ohio. I got my MA in History and African Studies at Michigan State after my Peace Corps service and my PhD in Humanities Education at Ohio State after our tours in Sierra Leone and Fiji where my husband Jack was Associate and then Peace Corps Director and where I taught in teacher training colleges. You joined the Peace Corps with your husband? Well, yes, my future husband. We applied in March 1961 when we, Jack and . . .

Caminata, A Journey By Lori DiPrete Brown (Honduras 1983-85) Global Reflections Press $10.50 (paperback); $3.99 (Kindle) 227 pages 2013 Reviewed by Dennis Harrison-Noonan (Costa Rica 1978-80) In her first published work of fiction, Caminata, A Journey Lori DiPrete Brown tells the story Beth Pellegrino and her first year after college living and  working with Mother Maria and the Sister of the Living Cross in an orphanage in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Her story begins on the day she arrives in Honduras.  We meet the girls of the house where she will serve as their encargada. We are introduced to Luz, Felicia, Rosa and Vera, 4 teenage girls whose journey to find their roots will engage Beth in her own pilgrimage of faith and personal discovery. The author is thorough in offering answers to questions that we as curious readers have concerning Beth’s decision to leave her college love, Jake, her comfortable lifestyle . . .

Rowland Scherman was the first Peace Corps photographer. He started in 1961 at the agency and he traveled the world. Rowland helped establish the image that the world had (and has) of what the Peace Corps is, and who we are as PCVs. A book of his work, with his running narrative, has just been published. It is entitled, TIMELESS Photography of Rowland Scherman and the forward is by Judy Collins. It was published by Peter E. Randall for $29.95. You can find it at www.PERpublisher.com. In the book Rowland talks about how he got a job with the Peace Corps. This was in March 1961. Like so many others, I was thrilled by JFK’s inaugural speech. I wasn’t a “professional” photographer, really. I had been a studio assistant for a fashion guy, and I made a few dollars doing portraits “on location” on the streets of New York City. . . .

Meredith W. Cornett (Panama 1991-93) is the author of Heart of Palms: My Peace Corps Years in Tranquilla soon to be published by the University of Alabama Press, and editor of Peace Corps in Panama: Fifty Years, Many Voices published by Peace Corps Writers (2013). • Meredith, how did you find your way into the Peace Corps. Well, I was born and raised in Atlanta, and I went to Oberlin College in Ohio and majored in   biology. This is where I had my Peace Corps interview. After my tour with the Peace Corps, I attended the University of Minnesota for a MS and PhD in Forestry. . Were you involved with forestry as a PCV? Yes, I was a community forester in Panama from 1991 to 1993. It was a beautiful location in Chagres National Park in the tiny village of Tranquilla on the shores of Lake Alajuela. . What got . . .

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com, click on the book cover or the bold book title — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance that will help support our annual writers awards. • • 44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass by Jeff J. Brown (Tunisia 1980–82) 44 Days Publication $15.99 (paperback) 392 pages August 2013 • India Basin Triangle: A San Francisco Noir Thriller by Craig Carrozzi (Colombia 1978–1980) CreateSpace $14.99 (paperback), $7.99 (Kindle) 200 pages October 2013 • The Glory of the Kings (Novel) by Dan Close (Ethiopia 1966–68) The Tamarac Press $19.95 393 pages November 2013 • Somehow: Living on Uganda Time (Essays and photographs) by Douglas Cruickshank (Uganda 2009–12) Verflectin Media $60.00 420 pages 2013 • Pieces of You . . .

Vatican Waltz Roland Merullo (Micronesia 1979–80) Crown Publishing Group $23.00 (hardcover), $9.59 (Kindle), $29.95 (audio CD) 293 pages 2013 Reviewed by Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Peru 1962-64) • Cynthia Clare Pantedosi, the innocent, young protagonist of Roland Merullo’s novel, Vatican Waltz, enjoys a rich prayer life. Raised a Catholic in Boston, Cynthia senses that God may be communicating with her through visions, but she’s aware that they might simply be foolish day dreams. She’s a serious, humble woman who studies nursing and cooks for her father whose English still reflects his deep, Italian roots. She discusses her visions with Father Alberto, a liberal Catholic priest who comes to accept that Cynthia is not disturbed, and that God may be calling her to the priesthood. It is Father Alberto who gives Cynthia the nudge she needs to meet with the bishop who, after interviewing Cynthia, reluctantly points her toward Rome. The novel . . .

Here is a conversation I recently had with Aaron Barlow, author of  Hard as Kerosene published by Peace Corps writers. — JC • Aaron, where were you a PCV? In Togo from 1988 to 1990. . Where are you from in the States? Though I was born in North Carolina, I grew up primarily in the Midwest, with stops back South and in the Northeast. I attended Beloit College in Wisconsin for my undergraduate degree and the University of Iowa for my MA and PhD. . Then you joined the Peace Corps? No. I had spent two years in Burkina Faso as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer and had met many PCVs and admired them all. From them, I learned that there is much more to African life than can be found in the cities. I joined so that I could live in a village and discover a part of Africa . . .

Somehow: Living on Uganda Time by Douglas Cruickshank (Uganda 2009-12) Verflectin Media, San Francisco http://douglascruickshank.com/ $60.00 400 pages 2013 Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) Douglas Cruickshank’s Somehow: Living on Uganda Time, is a big book, and its 400 pages of photos and text are heavy, amazingly so. Not as in ‘heavy going’, but as in profoundly engrossing. To both the author-photographer and his friends the Ugandans, it is heavy with special meanings; stimulating, fascinating, captivating and… You get the idea. When he joined the Peace Corps and went to Uganda Douglas Cruickshank was 56 and had recently downsized his life. He called it the “Great Shedding of Things”, having sold and given away most of his possessions and encumbrances – except his camera, a sense of adventure and his way of seeing and capturing the essence of life digitally. He entered Uganda as a stranger in a strange land, . . .