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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 . . .

Peace Corps Worldwide interviewed  Gary Cornelius about his Peace Corps service and his new book, Dancing with Gogos: A Peace Corps Memoir [Peace Corps Writers, 2014]. • Gary, where and when did you serve in the Peace Corps? In South Africa, from January 2012 to April 2013. I was “med-sepped” after about 14 months because I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disorder. The symptoms were relatively minor, and still are, so I’ve not started medication. My only treatment thus far is participation in a monthly support group for “early onset” Parkinson’s people. . What was your Peace Corp project assignment? I was a health Volunteer and trained as part of a group of 36 — 30 women and 6 men. The official title was HIV Outreach Worker and we were all part of the Peace Corps South Africa Community HIV/AIDS Outreach Project, or CHOP. There were about 100 health Volunteers in . . .

Dancing with Gogos is the story of one man’s effort to make a difference in a collection of Zulu villages in rural South Africa, while fulfilling a life-long dream of serving in the United States Peace Corps. It’s the story of learning a new language, of immersing oneself in a different culture, of leaving a love 15,000 kilometers behind and discovering the unexpected chance to find a new one half a world away. It’s the story of South Africa’s history of apartheid and the effects of that sorry legacy on tens of millions of black Africans who to this day struggle to leave behind 500 years of oppression. • Gary Cornelius was nearly 55 when he realized that he was weeks away from being the age at which Oregon public employees could retire early and get a modest pension, so the month he turned 55 he retired  — after a . . .

A Writer Writes How I Was Bombed Out of Sri Lanka And Other Career Changes Sri Lanka: The author and his students (Spring 1998). I spent a year as a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Kandy, Sri Lanka. While there, a suicide bomber blew himself up close to my home, which led to the evacuation of the Volunteers from the country. Well, evacuation may be too strong a word, but a security officer flew over from Washington, DC to evaluate the situation and he determined that the best thing to do was send the Volunteers home. I returned home to New York in April 1998, after a three-day layover in Bangkok, just in time to re-enroll in the summer semester at Fordham University, from which I had taken a leave of absence to teach overseas. I only had one course left before having to take my comprehensive exams and graduating . . .

THE PEACE CORPS EXPERIENCE AWARD was initiated in 1992. It is presented annually to a Peace Corps Volunteer or staff member, past or present for the best depiction of life in the Peace Corps. It can be a personal essay, story, novella, poem, letter, cartoon, song or memoir. The subject matter can be any aspect of the Peace Corps experience — daily life, assignment, travel, host country nationals, other Volunteers, readjustment. In 1997, this award was renamed to honor Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965—67) whose Living Poor has been widely cited as an outstanding telling of the essence of the Peace Corps experience. • CONGRATULATIONS to Eleanor Stanford (Cape Verde 1998–2000) for winning the  2014 Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award for her memoir História, História: Two Years in the Cape Verde Islands. Eleanor will receive a small cash award, and a certificate. This is the second Peace Corps Writers Award . . .

I just came across an article that was published in May of 2004 on the our old website Peace Corps Writers that is worthy of republishing for all those contemplating — or are in the midst of — writing a book. — M • The Ticking by Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996–98) • THERE IS a classic fiction-writing-workshop story that goes something like this: A man drove home from work, pulled into his driveway, and parked his car. As he opened his front door he called out, “Hi, Honey, I’m home!” Then he settled into his favorite chair, exhausted, to read the evening paper. “Sweetheart, I’m just putting a pie in the oven,” he heard his wife call out from the kitchen. “Dinner will be ready in about a half hour.” “Great,” said her husband, “I’m starving to death.” “So what?” you say? “Who cares?” You put the story down . . .

Lauren Greasewater’s War (novel) by Stephen Hirst (Liberia 1962–1964) Muuso Press 2013 238 pages $14.99 (paperback), $7.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Darcy Meijer (Gabon 1982–84) The front cover of Lauren Greasewater’s War by Stephen Hirst is an Edward Curtis photo from 1907 depicting the full face of a Havasupai woman. From the first page until the dramatic finish, Hirst relates a gripping story that could well have occurred in 1970s Arizona within the Native American Havasupai community. Lauren Greasewater’s War comprises five parts: Cradle, Blood, Song, Shelter and War. The first four develop the themes of the novel — origin, family, spirituality and home, while the last part brings these together. In brief, New York lutenist Lauren Napier, adopted by a white family as an infant, learns her true parentage and travels to the Havasupai canyonlands in the Southwest to find out more. Strong-willed and driven by the need for senses . . .

Padre! A Place Whose Rules Rearrange Your Own By Raven Moore (Cote d’Ivoire 2000-02) Books by Raven, $19.99 (paper); $9.99 (Kindle) 338 pages 2013 Reviewed by Deidre Swesnik (Mali 1996-98) “The Ivoirien children who you see me living with on the cover of this book are poor, but poverty is not a permanent condition, nor does it have a recognizable face.  Color was and is not often the reason for our mistreatment of one another.  The Egyptians, the Moors, the Mongolians, the Romans, the Jews, the British, the Ottomans, the Dutch, the Americans, the Mandinka, the Mayans, and more; the list of conquerors is as diverse as those conquered.  Ivoiriens in the Ivory Coast – La Cote d’Ivoire as it is called in West Africa – have it badly, but I’m not here to make you feel sorry for Ivoiriens.  Feel sorry for me that it took me so long . . .

The Dandy Vigilante (mystery) by Kevin Daley (Samoa 1986-89) Anaphora Literary Press 252 pages March 2014 $19.00 (paperback), $3.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Will Siegel (Ethiopia 1962-64) The hard-boiled crime genre is a tough nut in these days of sympathetic detectives who insist on dragging their personal problems into their professional crime fighting life. Just the right tone is needed. Lean a little on tough talk, you’re prone to cliché, lean on the curt description you’re liable to wander from the story line. And lean on the cynicism in which the genre reacted to the romantic novel, and you’re out of touch with an age already cynical about cynicism. Masters such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, or rougher types Ross MacDonald and Mickey Spillane set the tone in the 30’s and after the WW II. In today’s crowded acre of crime and mystery novels, the rub is how to get a . . .

Kilometer Ninety-Nine by Tyler McMahon (El Salvador 1999-02) St. Martin’s Griffin $14.99 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) 344 pages 2014 Reviewed by Philip Damon (Ethiopia 1963–65) This is a gem of a book. It’s a coming of age saga that touches on visceral themes affecting numerous cultures in a disarmingly naïve narrative voice. Under the guise of a surfer’s escape fantasy gone haywire, author Tyler McMahon deftly enables his part-Hawaiian Peace Corps engineer Malia to narrate her story in such a way that it unfolds on numerous levels of situation and meaning. At one level, it’s a fictional chronicle of the El Salvador earthquakes of 2001, limning the experiences of two groups of people-the earthy class of Salvadorans, and the twenty-something PCVs living and serving among them. At another level, it’s a tale of intrigue and danger in a foreign land. And at a subtler level, Malia’s narrative breathes life to the . . .