At twenty-one, Evelyn is naïve about life and love. Raised in a small Montana town, she moves at age sixteen with her devout Catholic family to California. There, she is drawn to Latino culture when she works among the migrant workers. During the summer of her junior year in college, Evelyn travels to a small Mexican town to help set up a school and a library—an experience that whets her appetite for a life full of both purpose and adventure.
After graduation, Evelyn joins the Peace Corps and is sent to perform community development work in a small mountain town in the Andes of Perú. There, she and her roommate, Marie, search for meaningful projects and adjust to living with few amenities. Over the course of eighteen months, the two young women work in a hospital, start 4-H clubs, attend campesino meetings, and teach PE in a school with dirt floors. Evelyn is chosen queen of the local boys’ high school and—despite her resolve to resist such temptations—falls in love with a university student. As she comes of age, Evelyn learns about life and love the hard way when she must choose between following the religious rules of her youth and giving in to her sexual desires.
Industry Reviews
2021 Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award Winner
2020 CIBA Hearten Book Awards 1st Place Winner
2020 Readers' Favorite Book Awards Finalist in Non-Fiction - Cultural
2020 International Book Awards Finalist Multicultural Non-Fiction
"LaTorre presents a forthright and candid voice. . . . LaTorre’s story is one of a determined young woman keen to achieve her goals; her relationship with Antonio will have readers guessing how the romance will turn out. Illustrated with the author's photographs, this bold memoir offers many rich details about Peru and the Peace Corps . . ."
-Kirkus Reviews
“Evelyn LaTorre creates a masterful portrait of place—from the Montana hills to the peaks of Perúuacute;—and illustrates how place shapes us. The many lovely metaphors and descriptions throughout the book invite the reader to see through the eyes of an innocent girl as she discovers exotic, lively cultures; absorbs the colors, sounds, passion, and intensity of that new world; and allows it to change her life path.”
—Linda Joy Myers, president of the National Association of Memoir Writers and author of Don’t Call Me Mother, Song of the Plains, and The Power of Memoir
“In a stunning Andean valley blessed by eternal spring, a young woman finds her life turning around even more than the winding mountain roads that brought her there for two years of volunteer service in the Peace Corps. A great read for all ages.”
—Charles David Kleymeyer, PhD, author of the award-winning YESHU: A Novel for the Open-Hearted
“Walls typically keep people and things both in and out. In this memoir of her days as a Peace Corp Volunteer, Evelyn LaTorre breaks down those walls and tells a story of establishing relationships and projects in the mountains of Perú in the sixties—a fascinating story of challenges faced in learning about oneself through the eyes of another culture. Once you start reading, you won’t want to put it down.”
—Dr. Jackie M. Allen, MFT, Associate Professor of Education, University of La Verne, and coauthor of A Pathway to PDS Partnership: Using the PDSEA Protocol
“Evelyn LaTorre tells a story that becomes that of the readers as we struggle with her growing up in the rural Midwest, through the risks of joining the Peace Corps, and moving to Perú. Scenes remain in my mind as if these stories had been my own. I found myself caught up in adventure after adventure, from copper ovens to shoeless kids playing soccer, from busy cities with cobblestone streets to roads that clung to the sides of mountains. I became captivated by Evelyn’s community of students and peers and the man who became Evelyn’s big love.”
—Charlotte Robin Cook, MFA, former publisher, current story editor, and head fiction judge for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards
“Travel with Evelyn LaTorre during the early chaotic days of the Peace Corps as she arrives in Perú and must navigate finding housing and a suitable volunteer job in an unfamiliar land whose language she barely speaks. Along the way, she also finds friends, love, and respect for a new culture. An inspiring journey.”
—Tish Davidson, editor of the California Writers Club 2019 Literary Review and author of African American Scientists and Inventors and The Vaccine Debate
“Evelyn LaTorre made two trips. The first, in 1964, was an expedition to Perú with the Peace Corps. The second was in her memoir by retelling the story of that transforming experience.”
—Alaide Ventura Medina, author of Como Caracol, winner of the 2018 Gran Angular Prize, and Entre Los Rotos, winner of the 2019 Mauricio Achar Prize
