Author - Marian Haley Beil

  About Walled In, Walled Out — A Young American Woman in Iran by Mary Dana Marks (Iran 1964–66) • WHILE THE UNITED STATES leaps on and off a collision course with Iran, Americans forget we have not always been enemies. This memoir is set in 1960s Iran, when the Shah reigns, American consultants abound, the word ayatollah is rarely heard, and SAVAK, Iran’s secret police, wields uncompromising power. In the west, Persia evokes images of colorful carpets, wealthy oil sheiks, and glamorous royalty. Leaders of the 1979 Iranian Revolution are in elementary school when Mary  answers  John F. Kennedy’s call to “ask what you can do for your country” and joins the Peace Corps. The setting is Kerman, a conservative provincial capital on the stark Iranian plateau where she’s assigned to teach English to high school girls. Problems soon appear. As she struggles with the basics of everyday life, Iranians . . .

  About Spies and Deserters — A Novel of the American Revolution by Martin R. Ganzglass (Somalia 1966–68) SPIES AND DESERTERS FOLLOWS eighteen-year-old Will Stoner, a Lieutenant in General Henry Knox’s artillery regiment, and his friend, Private Adam Cooper, an African American in the Marblehead Mariners, from the bleak, disease ridden camp at Valley Forge through the cauldron of the summer heat of the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse, to the bloody, vicious guerrilla war between Whig and Tory militias and irregulars in southern New Jersey. By drawing on diaries, original letters, military orders and broadsheets, Spies and Deserters creates an accurate picture of the everyday lives of ordinary soldiers, merchants and farmers, women, Whigs, Loyalists and Hessians, all caught up in the revolution. Spies and Deserters is my fourth novel about the American Revolution published by Peace Corps Writers. Like the others in the series, Cannons for the Cause, Tories and Patriots, and Blood Upon . . .

  In Kay Gillies Dixon’s new book, Tales of Family Travel: Bathrooms of the World, she chronicles her family’s globe trotting through Rome, Kenya, Cyprus and parts beyond. Returned Peace Corps Volunteer parents Kevin and Kay Dixon embraced a passion for travel that they hoped to imprint on their four daughters. In the late 1970s, Kevin landed a contract to work in Saudi Arabia. The Dixons could not pack their bags fast enough. This was the opportunity to provide two fundamental values to their children — roots and wings. The author narrates their story with finesse and descriptions that take you along on the journey. Their child-centric exploits lead them to unimaginable experiences that otherwise might have been missed. A day visiting a Maasai settlement nearly takes a deep dive when their precocious toddler wanders away. Determined to go on an elephant safari in Nepal sends them river rafting after their . . .

  Nuns, Nam & Henna: A Memoir in Poetry and Prose has been published by Larry Berube (Morocco 1977–79). The poems and prose  are recollections from his boyhood experiences at St. Peter’s Orphanage in Manchester, New Hampshire, from the age six to twelve; his time as a young soldier in the U.S. Army with the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam; and as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco where he worked in small villages of the Middle Atlas Mountain region of Morocco on various water projects. Nuns Nam & Henna is an honest, straightforward — and sometimes heartbreaking — account of the author’s story. Larry says that he “writes with humor when he can, and with an absence of victimhood all the time.” Larry Berube was born in Nashua, New Hampshire. He has a B.A. in Writing and Communications from Rivier College. The author lives in Dunedin, Florida. • Nuns, Nam & Henna: A Memoir in Poetry and Prose . . .