Archive - September 2, 2014

The weekend edition of the WSJ has an amusing Peace Corps story entitled, “My Mom the Adventurer. Myself, Not So Much” written by novelist Dina Nayer, who’s debut novel, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, was released last year. The article is about how Dina went to visit her mother, who at the age 56 was a PCV in a rural Thailand village outside of Chiang Mai back in 2012. Anyone who has had parents or friends, etc., visit their site knows what happens next. While Dina grew up in America from the age of 10, her mother had been a doctor, a volunteer health-care worker, a radio personality, a pastry chef, had served time in a Iranian jail, and then  reaching the U.S. she became a PCV. Daughter Dina went to Harvard. Well, Dina comes to visit to stay for a month in her mother’s thatch-roofed hut (she lasted . . .

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com, click on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance that will help support our annual writers awards. • A Hitch at the Fairmont (Mystery for children 8–12) by Jim Averbeck (Cameroon 1990–94), illustrated by Nick Bertozzi Atheneum Books for Young Readers June 2014 416 pages $16.99 (hardcover), $9.78 (Kindle) • Dancing with Gogos: A Peace Corps Memoir (Memoir) by Gary P. Cornelius (South Africa 2012–13) A Peace Corps Writers Book July 2014 282 pages $13.00 (paperback) • Crashing Through the Underbrush by Gary P. Cornelius (South Africa 2012–13) Lulu 2011 280 pages $15.00 (paperback) • The Harder Right: Stories of Conscience and Choice (Ethics) by Arthur B. Dobrin (Kenya 1965–67) Argo Navis 2013 204 pages $19.95 (paperback), $7.69 (Kindle) • The Consolations . . .

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith wrote the first novel by a PCV, Lament For A Silver-Eyed Woman, published by Morrow in 1987. She is also the author of a half dozen other novels, including The Book of Phoebe (1985) and a series of mystery novels. She has also written a Memoir, Girls of Tender Age which recounts a bittersweet portrait of growing up in 1950s Hartford, Connecticut when a serial pedophile kills her best friends. Mixed with that story, is her own young life story, including living with an autistic brother at a time before anyone knew what that meant. Now Mary-Ann has turned her talents as a novelist in a new direction with the publication is this novel The Honoured Guest: Anne Alger Craven, Witness to Sumter, in Her Words. Here’s a quick summary of that story: It is November, 1860. Anne Alger Craven leaves her home at Abingdon Square, Manhattan, . . .