Rising literary star Deb Olin Unferth offers a new twist on the coming-of-age memoir in this utterly unique and captivating story of the year she ran away from college with her Christian boyfriend and followed him to Nicaragua to join the Sandinistas.
Despite their earnest commitment to a myriad of revolutionary causes and to each other, the couple find themselves unwanted, unhelpful, and unprepared as they bop around Central America, looking for "revolution jobs." The year is 1987, a turning point in the Cold War. The East-West balance has begun to tip, although the world doesn't know it yet, especially not Unferth and her fiancé (he proposes on a roadside in El Salvador). The months wear on and cracks begin to form in their relationship: they get fired, they get sick, they run out of money, they grow disillusioned with the revolution and each other. But years later the trip remains fixed in her mind and she finally goes back to Nicaragua to try to make sense of it all. Unferth's heartbreaking and hilarious memoir perfectly captures the youthful search for meaning, and is an absorbing rumination on what happens to a country and its people after the revolution is over.
My thoughts
This memoir is about a young woman’s journey to find a revolution in Central America with her boyfriend. George and Deb are two lost young Americans who are looking for a war to help fight and maybe love along the way in 1987 Central American. The writing is witty and fast paced. This short book though is really about first love and why this one year in the life of the author seems to be haunting her some twenty years later.
Disclosure: I received this book for review from the publisher. I received no compensation for my thoughts.
1 comments:
Sounds interesting. A fascinating period
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