Peace Corps writers

Chile Preserved When the Whistling Stopped (novel) by David J. Mather (Chile 1968–70) Peace Corps Writers 274 pages June 2014 $12.95 (paperback), $6.95 (Kindle) Reviewed by Richard M. Grimsrud (India 1965-67) • David Mather’s imaginative eco-thriller When the Whistling Stopped follows RPCV Tom Young back to his old Peace-Corps station outside Valdivia in southern Chile after three decades of dreaming about his mostly idyllic tour of duty there. Many of his old friends joyously welcome him back, but there is still a big hole in his heart for Maria Elena, the love of his life who was killed in a tragic accident just before they were to be married in a ramada on the beautiful plot of land Tom had bought for his retirement. But upon his return, Tom is saddened by more than his departed enamorada. The reforestation he had worked on as a Volunteer has come back to . . .

Rush of Shadows (historical fiction) by Catherine Bell (Brazil 1966–68) Washington Writers Publishing House October 2014 384 pages $17.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Reilly Ridgell (Micronesia 1971–73) • Here’s Catherine Bell’s first sentence of her novel, Rush of Shadows: It was a beautiful country, though I hated and feared it, coming over the mountains with the wagon staggering on a gimpy wheel, black crags towering over the track, the sky blue and thick as a flatiron, and the vultures turning and turning on the hot wind, waiting for somebody to die. Wow. Now here was some finely crafted prose worthy to open a novel. Was the whole book to be this way? Well it was, and much of the many themes woven together in this story of the settling of northern California can be discerned in that first sentence. Especially the vultures. And as I read through the book I was . . .

Child of Shadows by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) Seventh Window Publications, $6.99 (e-book) Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964-66) Coyne drops us into the subterranean world that exists beneath New York City and a world of tunnels under the Lower Level of Grand Central Station. A world filled with rats, more and bigger rats, garbage, violence and young bodies. We find ourselves looking at a twelve year old boy that is found near a crime scene. The boy is bald with no eyebrows, not speaking…a living dead. The chief social worker, Melissa Vaughn thinks the boy’s name is Adam, and wants to help him re-connect with society. Little does Melissa know what she will encounter as she takes Adam away from New York City and deep into the Appalachian Mountains. You will encounter adventure with potters that throw, excitement in rural Appalachia, and murders….lots of them! Some well written love . . .

My Turn Reflections of a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone by Betsy Small Campbell (Sierra Leone 1984–87) For the Concord, New Hampshire, Monitor Friday, October 3, 2014 (Published in print: Friday, October 3, 2014) (This is Part One in a two-part series. Look for the conclusion in tomorrow’s Forum.) . NO ONE WHO LIVED through the well-documented “blood diamond war” in Sierra Leone has forgotten the terrifying sound of an approaching automatic weapon. Still today, the loud noises of thunder, fireworks, a honking horn can cause panic. Millions of people in this mountainous West African country have fought to put the nightmare of 11 years of bloody civil chaos behind them. The conflict has been over for more than a decade, but the harrowing scars of war are everywhere. There are thousands of amputees, and the elders who should have been around to guide the next generation are . . .

The October “Peace Corps Update” email announced the winners of the Peace Corps’ second-annual “Blog It Home” competition. Blogs by more than 350 PCVs were submitted, and the winners were chosen via Facebook voting. In September the 9 winning “Top Bloggers,” authors of 8 blogs were invited to Washington and participated in a Third Goal spree during which they spoke at the White House, in schools for under-served students, to Girl Scouts and on the Voice of America. Visit the each of the winning blogs and read about how these PCVs are living the life! From Albania, Jill Conway’s “Holy Shqip Xhilli is in Albania” From Cameroon,  Anna Nathanson’s  “Anna Does Pangea“ From China, Keith and Heather May’s  Sponge and Slate From the Dominican Republic, Bronwen Raff’s  “Bea, Vea, Bella: Mensajes from a PCV in the Dominican Republic” From Guinea, Sara Laskowksi’s  “Sara in Peace Corps Guinea: 27 Months of Service . . .

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. • Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War (A volume in the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series) by Sharon Alane Abramowitz (Cote d’Ivoire 2000–2002) University of Pennsylvania Press July 2014 280 pages $65.00 (hardback) • I Know How to Hola For children starting language-immersion school. (English and Spanish Edition) by Susanne Aspley (Thailand 1989–91), illustrated by Lucas Richards Self-published 2012 $14.99 (hardcover) • I Know How to Nî Hâo For children starting language-immersion school. (English and Chinese Edition) by Susanne Aspley (Thailand 1989–91), illustrated by Lucas Richards Self-published 2013 36 pages $14.99 (hardcover) • Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small . . .

Long Ago And Far Away — Travel Through Time in John Coyne’s Latest Novel by Alex Wolff Pelham Weekly Renowned Pelham author John Coyne’s latest novel “Long Ago and Far Away” draws on his life and experience to tell a tale of star crossed lovers, spanning several decades and traveling across four continents. Revolving around the tragic 1973 death of a young woman in Ethiopia, Long Ago and Far Away uses a series of flashbacks in that country, Spain, New York, Washington and elsewhere to tell the story of Parker Bishop and Irish McCann, lovers who were driven apart by the death of their friend and the resulting trial which left questions as to whether the death was a murder or an accident. Bishop and McCann reconnect in the present day and set out to confront the man who knows the truth about what happened. “I’m a big fan of . . .

Breathe: A Memoir of Motherhood, Grief and Family Conflict by Kelly Kittel (Jamaica 1985–87) She Writes Press May 2014 369 pages $18.95 (paperback), $7.69 (Kindle) Reviewed by Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 1976–78) Shortly before I received Kelly Kittel’s wrenching memoir in the mail, I read a piece in The New Yorker about the poet Edward Hirsch, whose book length elegy to his son, dead at 24 of an overdose, has just been published. Hirsch says he didn’t want to write that book. He was mired in mourning and obsessed with the circumstances of his son’s life and death. But ultimately, the writing won out. ” . . . You become resigned,” he says. “Your job is to write about the life you actually have.” In a prologue to her book, Kittel offers a similar insight. She describes her childhood love affair with books and her lifelong hope of becoming a writer. What she . . .

In July, the University of Pennsylvania Press  published Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War by Sharon Alane Abramowitz (Cote d’Ivoire, 2000-2002), who teaches anthropology and African studies at the University of Florida. Searching for Normal . . . “explores the human experience of the massive apparatus of trauma-healing and psychosocial interventions during the first five years of postwar reconstruction. Sharon Alane Abramowitz draws on extensive fieldwork among the government officials, humanitarian leaders, and an often-overlooked population of Liberian NGO employees to examine the structure and impact of the mental health care interventions, in particular the ways they were promised to work with peacekeeping and reconstruction, and how the reach and effectiveness of these promises can be measured. From this courageous ethnography emerges a geography of trauma and the ways it shapes the lives of those who give and receive care in postwar Liberia.” For more about the . . .

David Mather (Chile 1968–70) has published his second novel with Peace Corps Writers. One for the Road, David’s first novel, published in 2011, tells the story of Tom Young, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Chile, and how that experience changed his life. Now in 2014, David has published a sequel, When the Whistling Stopped, that finds Tom going back to Chile 30 years after his service to resolve past heartaches. Once there he finds himself in the middle of tackling big-company pollution and the endangering of species. I talked with David about his Peace Corps experience and both of his books. — Marian • David, tell us about you educational background. I attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine and received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in History, and a minor in English Lit.. . What was your Peace Corps Assignment? I was a “B.A. generalist” doing . . .

The Mystery of Money: Understanding the Modern Financial World by Harlan Green (Turkey 1964–66) Publishing by the Seas 126 pages May 2014 $12.95 (paperback), $8.95 (Kindle) Reviewed by Leo Cecchini (Ethiopia 1962–64) This book is not about “mystery,” but about how to invest your money. The author says in the second sentence it is about “. . . how to make money work for us. . .” As such it is a very useful and reasonably priced guide to investing. The other objective of the book is to warn how financial markets are “. . . so opaque to the uninformed eye . . . that it is easy for insiders to manipulate and mislead investors.” While also useful, the author is a little too given to casting this part as a matter of “them,” the unscrupulous financiers, versus “us,” the gullible investing public. The book starts with the “sub-prime” fiasco that caused the “Great Recession.” This is . . .

Young Widower: A Memoir by John W. Evans (Bangladesh 1999–2001) Winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize University of Nebraska Press March, 2014 185 Pages $19.95 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) John Evans has written an unusual and superb memoir of mourning in the aftermath of a devastating death. Five years into his marriage, his wife Katie, whom he met in the Peace Corps, is mauled and killed by a brown bear in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. They have been living in Bucharest on Katie’s fellowship when they decide to go for a trek with Sara, a friend. They are athletic, experienced hikers, too young to worry about personal destiny, never expecting the possibility of disaster, thinking themselves “invulnerable to trauma and tragedy,” when with a few misjudgments and unforeseen happenstance, the impossible occurs. They had planned to stay overnight on the mountain in . . .

Clifford Garstang (Korea 1976–77), author of the collection of short stories In An Uncharted Country — winner of the 2010 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award, and “a novel in stories,” What the Zhang Boys Know — winner of the 2013 Library of Virginia Award for Fiction, is the editor of a newly published book of travel stories, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet [Press 53]. . Everywhere Stories includes three stories by RPCVs: “A Husband and Wife Are One Satan” set in Kazakhstan was written by Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002–04), author of Lake: And Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land that won the 2012 Peace Corps writers Award for Best Poetry Book; “International Women’s Day” by Jennifer Lucy Martin (Chad 1996-98); and “Eggs” set in set in Central African Republic is by Susi Wyss (Central African Republic 1990–92) who won the 2012 Peace Corps . . .

Social worker Melissa Vaughn is frustrated by the soullessness of urban life and the bureaucratic hoops she has to jump through to make a difference in the lives of the needy and downtrodden. Her only desire is to make a difference in one life and not have to follow rules laid out by people who know nothing about her job or how to help the indigent. Then a boy comes along. A boy found living in the dark, rat infested subways of New York City. A mute boy devoid of hair, without a family or a history. The only clue to his past is a name sewn into his underwear: Adam. Determined to help Adam, Melissa takes him to a remote section of the Blue Ridge Mountains to connect with him and possibly unravel the mystery of his past. She soon discovers his artistic genius and his ability to depict . . .