Archive - July 15, 2022

  The Real Presence: A Novel Ron  Singer (Nigeria 1964–67) Adelaide Books, May 2021 236 pages $19.60 (paperback) Reviewed by Lucinda Wingard (Nigeria 1966-68) • Many of us RPCVs will agree that our lives were significantly altered by living and working in a foreign country. For author Ron Singer (Nigeria 1964-67) the years since Peace Corps have included serious attempts to understand and write about the evolution of his country-of-service. The Real Presence opens with two Igbo characters each taking a chapter to describe for an indeterminate audience their lives before and up to independence in 1960. Addressing the reader in distinctly regional cadence, Lydia Ogochukwu and her much younger brother Jerry (Jeremiah) tell of village life, tribal customs, and their education from the 1930s to the 1950s. They attempt to correct the reader’s misconceptions about their birthplace and the region’s history. The third character is Peace Corps Volunteer Bob Shepard . . .