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Books published by Peace Corps Writers
2017
Dusty Land: Stories of Two Teachers in the Kalahari
by John Ashford (Botswana 1990-92)
Peace Corps Writers
December 17, 2017
260 pages
$13.00 (paperback)
IT WAS WITH GREAT RELIEF that John Ashford realized he was going to do something new in his life.
In his mid-fifties and happily married to his second wife, Gen, John wanted to feel as passionate about work and life as he had felt when he started teaching thirty years earlier.
With some convincing, and a short stint volunteering with him in a refugee camp in Thailand, Gen agreed to be John’s fellow adventurer, join the Peace Corps, and serve in Botswana in southern Africa.
Once in Botswana, John began taking notes about his “new” life with an inkling that he would publish a book about his experiences. He kept a journal of conversations, cultural differences, people and their idiosyncrasies, and what it was like being a middle-aged Westerner in Africa.
Once their two years in the Peace Corps ended, John’s notes didn’t yet make a collection of stories, but after taking several classes on creative writing the notes began to sparkle in his mind. Most importantly, he realized he was able to enjoy his transformative experience a second time by putting it in writing.
Spies and Deserters: A Novel of the American Revolution
by Martin R. Ganzglass (Somalia 1966–68)
Peace Corps Writers
April 26, 2017
378 pages
$14.72 (paperback)
SPIES AND DESERTERS BY by Martin R. Ganzglass, 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.
Thoroughly researched, this novel, and the others in the series by Ganzglass, Cannons for the Cause, Tories and Patriots, and Blood Upon the Snow, are ideal for those who love American history as well as supplementary reading for students and teachers alike. Each novel contains End Notes with quotations from original sources as well as interpretations of events by well-known historians. There is also an extensive bibliography.
Read more about Spies and Deserters
Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond
by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971–73)
Peace Corps Writers
April 11, 2017
332 pages
$18.00 (paperback)
FRESH OUT OF COLLEGE in 1971, the author hoped to do some traveling — although not to Vietnam — with Uncle Sam and to save the world. Walker has written an inspirational memoir describing where those youthful dreams took him. On this lifelong journey of physical and spiritual self-discovery, he traveled throughout Lain America, Africa, Europe and Asia exploring different ways of improving others’ lives. A long the way he underwent amazing personal growth as he witnessed the heartbreaking suffering and vulnerability of the poor in developing countries.
Walker’s adventures included serving in the Peace Corps in Guatemala, where he met and married his wife; promoting rural development in Latin America, fundraising for nongovernmental organizations and targeting hunger, human trafficking, public health, and more.
This uplifting insider’s guide to international development, philanthropy, and travel will resonate with idealists and armchair travelers alike. National Peace Corps President/RPCV Glenn Blumhorst said “It’s one of the best RPCV memoirs I’ve read (and I have gone through quite a few).” RPCV from Guatemala Buck Deines said, “I’ve experienced a virtual rollercoaster of emotions reading your book…At times your vivid descriptions provide a sense of deep warmth, smiles, laughter…But reading other parts…bring back tears and long suppressed feelings of anger and outrage towards the evil of it all. It surprises me at times how strongly those memories still affect me after all these years.”
Read more about Mark and Different Latitudes
Read “Talking with Mark Walker”
Walled In, Walled Out: A Young American Woman in Iran
by Mary Dana Marks (Iran 1964–66)
A Peace Corps Writers Book
April 4, 2017
348 pages
$16.00 (paperback), $5.49 (Kindle)
WHILE OUR COUNRTY leaps on and off a collision course with Iran, Americans forget we have not always been enemies. In the 1960s, Persia evokes images of colorful carpets and glamorous royalty. The shah reigns, the word ayatollah is rarely spoken, yet the secret police wield uncompromising power. 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 southern city, where she teaches English to high school girls. In the classroom or walking through the bazaar, Mary is the exotic one. But the adobe walls that seclude women from prying eyes exclude her, a bareheaded foreigner. Her every move is scrutinized; Mary’s youthful indiscretions nearly get her ejected from the city.
Woven throughout this adventure are dusty travels from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea, colorful feasts, rich history, and hidden romance. Walled In, Walled Out recounts Mary’s convoluted, often humorous journey from ignorance to understanding in this place that mixes mirage and harsh reality, a country where the people speak with many voices.
Read more about Walled In, Walled Out
Read John Krauskopf’s review of Walled In, Walled Out
Sami the Wooly: The Most Beautiful Dog In The World
by Jay Hersch (Colombia 1964–66)
Peace Corps Writers
March 2017
90 pages
$12.50 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle)
The intimate relationship between a Siberian Husky and his extended family.
Yovo
(A Peace Corps novel)
by Stephen F. Dexter. Jr. (Togo 1988–91)
Peace Corps Writers
February 12, 2017
396 pages
$21.00 (paperback)
JOINING THE PEACE CORPS and moving half a world away to serve in a developing country wasn’t the hard part. Coming home was.
When Rick “Oly” Olymeyer returns to America in the early ’90s after serving in the Peace Corps in Togo, West Africa, he thought he’d be able to jump right in, readjusting to a life of relative ease with “regular” Americans. He never thought he’d become the proverbial fish out of water, distanced even from his own family as he hops from temp job to temp job, searching for meaning and a place in society.
But he soon discovers the painful difficulty of finding his purpose in an American economy and culture that can’t possibly understand the dynamics of the life passionately devoted to service he’d lived in a village in Africa.
After an encounter with a professor eventually leads to his involvement in a dispute between land developers and the descendants of freed slaves, Oly’s two worlds collide. He has Samantha, whom he met in Togo, as his touchstone, but is she enough to help him ground himself as a citizen of current-day America while preserving his love for the Africa he left behind?