New Novel Cites Peace Corps Books In Research

In August a book comes out entitled Rich Boy, written by Sharon Pomerantz, a graduate of the University of Michigan’s MFA program who now teaches writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It is a ‘novel of class, money, and love–spanning four decades in the life of a young man determined to escape his past.” It took Pomerantz ten years to write. She is not an RPCV, but there is a Peace Corps connection. (There is always a Peace Corps connection!)

 The connection with RPCV writers is that in Ms. Pomerantz acknowledgements she mentions two Peace Corps books she used in her research, Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle by Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67) and P. David Searles (CD/Philippines 1971-74; PC/W 1974-76) The Peace Corps Experience: Change and Challenge, 1969-1976. David is one of our bloggers as you may know. The “Peace Corps” connection, however, is slight in this novel that the publisher (TWELVE) says on the Advance Copy is a “beautifully written, richly observed, romantic, absorbing, sweeping drama that revivifies the Jewish-American novel.”

The novel, a panoramic portrayal of the Sixties to the Eighties, nevertheless picks up on one thread in our American story: The Peace Corps.