Author - John Coyne

Using the unlikely topic of tombstones, Ghlee Woodworth, who spent some 13 years with the Peace Corps as a PCV in the Comoros Islands, and then as a Peace Corps Trainer for projects in Namibia, Swaziland, Niger, Bulgaria, Moldova, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Bangladesh, traveling to a total of 45 countries before coming home to Newburyport, Massachusetts, where she pieced together a picture of 19th-century Newburyport through the stories of 80 people laid to rest in the Oak Hill Cemetery. And this is only her first volume. Tiptoe Through the Tombstones, which is self published, recently was named runner-up in the Biography/Autobiography category for the 2009 Book of the Year at the New England Book Festival (beating out the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s book, True Compass). It tells the stories of some of Newburyport’s 19th-century founders: ship captains, entrepreneurs and political leaders. “It takes many citizens to build a community, and some of the people I’ve written about were . . .

Eternal on the Water is “A touching love story immersed in the beautiful simplicity of nature and life lived in the present moment,” says novelist Lisa Genove about the new book by Joseph Monninger (Burkina Faso 1975-77). Monninger has written fiction and non-fiction, YAs, and memoirs. He had written about boxing matches and sled dogs and Africa. Most recently  he has been writing successful, award winning, Young Adult books, the latest Hippie Chick. Back in 1991 he wrote The Viper Tree set in Ouagodougou, Burkina Faso. Now he has written a big romance about two adults who meet while kayaking on Maine’s Allagash River and fall deeply in love. The two approach life with the same sense of adventure they use to conquer the river’s treacherous rapids. This is a warm love story where two “soul mates” meet by chance, fall perfectly and completely in love, but quickly learn their time together is fated . . .

Reviewer Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962-64) is a writer and policy consultant living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation outside Pendleton, Oregon. Here Tom reviews William F.S. Miles book My African Horse Problem published by the University of Massachusetts Press. • My African Horse Problem by William F. S. Miles (Niger 1977-79) with Samuel B. Miles University of Massachusetts Press 2008 $22.95 208 pages, 26 illustrations Reviewed by Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962–64) My African Horse Problem recounts the intricacies [sic] of this unusual father-son expedition, a sometimes harrowing two-week trip that Samuel joined as “true heir” to the disputed stallion. It relates the circumstances leading up to the dispute and describes the intimacy of a relationship spanning a quarter century between William Miles and the custodians of his family horse — Islamic village friends eking out a precarious existence along the remote sub-Saharan borderline between Nigeria and Niger. Bill Miles is a . . .

Reviewer Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962-64) is a writer and policy consultant living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation outside Pendleton, Oregon. Here Tom reviews The Heartland Chronicles by Douglas Foley published by the University of  Pennsylvania Press in 1995, then again in 2005. • The Heartland Chronicles by Douglas Foley (Philippines 1962-64) University of Pennsylvania Press 1995; 2005 with Epilogue 264 pages $29.97 Reviewed by Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962–64) Another book that really meets the Peace Corps’ Third Goal of bringing it all back home, let me here applaud Douglas Foley’s THE HEARTLAND CHRONICLES. In 1995 when Foley published the book he was an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. Now he be a full professor. “A tale of Indians and whites living together in a small Iowa community,” this tidily laid out book relates how Foley got inside Iowa’s tiny but old Meskwaki  Indian culture just at the . . .

Reviewer  Tom Hebert is a writer and policy consultant living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation outside Pendleton, Oregon. Here he reviews  I Am The Grand Canyon: The Story of the Havasupai People which first came out in 1976, then was revised in 1985 and again in 2007. • I Am The Grand Canyon: The Story of the Havasupai People by Stephen Hirst (Liberia 1962-64) Grand Canyon Association Copyright 2006 by the Havasupai Tribe 2007 276 pages $18.95 Reviewed by Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962–64) The last ethnographic book to be reviewed in this three-part series for you to Amazon and read is Stephen Hirst’s 2006, “I Am The Grand Canyon: The Story of the Havasupai People.” First published in 1976 and updated in 1985, this book has the ultimate jacket blurb: “This book is our Bible. We use it to teach our kids who they are.” -Fydel Jones, Havasupai. Book writers . . .

A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta by Theroux is due out in mid-February from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This is Theroux’s forty-third book, his twenty-seventh novel that includes Hotel Honolulu, My Other Life, and The Elephanta Suite, his most recent collection of short fiction, which Time Magazine said was, “a set of brilliantly evocative and propulsive novellas.” This novel is about Jerry Delfont, a travel journalist leading an aimless life, struggling in vain against his writer’s block, and flitting around the edges of a half-hearted romance when he receives a mysterious letter asking for his help. The story he tells is distrubing: a dead boy found on the floor of a cheap hotel; a seemingly innocent man in flight and fearing for his reputation as well as his life. Well, typical Theroux. Note: A Dead Hand is now available at Amazon — click on either the linked title or the book . . .

Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry By Evan Wolfson (Togo 1978-80) Simon & Schuster, $14.00 256 pages 2004 Tenderfoot Mary Timble (The Gambia 1979-81) Treble Heart Books, $13.50 289 pages January 2010   A Witness in Tunis By J.P. Jones (pseudonym for Phil Jones Tunisia 1966-68) Booksurge, $14.9 410 pages January 2010 Through Our Eyes: Peace Corps In Korea,1966-1981 Editor by Bill Harwood (Korea 1975-77) COMA the Artist Company Korea, $50 200 pages October 2009