Spanning images and voices from around the globe, as well as from the tiny, muted corners of a woman's dreams, this new collection spins and stretches and soothes with its vibrant and teasing language and rich stories.

This book charts the life of two young American teachers immersed in an Afghan village, and later in Kabul, from 1973-1976, before the onset of decades of conflict. In this turn back to the memories coded and buried in those years, and in the flashes to more recent events and reflections, the book portrays stories, scenes, people and realities long lost. In the minute particulars and in the large, political and cultural strokes which made up that complex country of hospitable people who shaped the writer's life in unpredictable ways, one finds the seeds which grew to shape a country, a region, an endless war, and which now impact a new millennium.

Frances Garrett Connell (b. 1949) completed degrees from Barnard College, the University of Virginia, and Columbia University and has taught at Kabul University, University of Pennsylvania, St. Mary s Seminary and University, Montgomery College, and George Mason University, as well as at Lycee Mahasty and Lansdowne-Aldan High School, and for Montgomery County (Maryland) Adult Education programs. She has also done consulting for Peace Corps, Bread for the World, World Hunger Education, International Educational Forum, and other organizations. Her poems, articles and stories have appeared in some thirty magazines, as well as organization and association newsletters, the anthology But Can They Do Field Work? (OGN Publications), and The Christian Science Monitor. Other books by the author include: The Rest is Silence: Selected Poems (Xlibris), and four volumes published under a biography-oral history imprint, A Reminiscence Sing: Marcia: a Book of Memories; Dave s Words; The Collected Poems of John Stephen Garrett; and The Banyan Tree.She is working on fine-tuning a pictorial essay and memoir on living in Afghanistan from 1973-1976, Children Kept from the Sun; another collection of poetry, This Side of the Truth; and a novella-short story collection named The Hare in the Moon and Other Stories.From her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, she awaits like gifts the actual and visiting presence of three mostly grown-up Irish-named sons, and her husband, Tom.

This book charts the life of two young American teachers immersed in an Afghan village, and later in Kabul, from 1973-1976, before the onset of decades of conflict. In this turn back to the memories coded and buried in those years, and in the flashes to more recent events and reflections, the book portrays stories, scenes, people and realities long lost. In the minute particulars and in the large, political and cultural strokes which made up that complex country of hospitable people who shaped the writer's life in unpredictable ways, one finds the seeds which grew to shape a country, a region, an endless war, and which now impact a new millennium.

Spanning images and voices from around the globe, as well as from the tiny, muted corners of a woman's dreams, this new collection spins and stretches and soothes with its vibrant and teasing language and rich stories.

Frances Garrett Connell (b. 1949) completed degrees from Barnard College, the University of Virginia, and Columbia University and has taught at Kabul University, University of Pennsylvania, St. Mary s Seminary and University, Montgomery College, and George Mason University, as well as at Lycee Mahasty and Lansdowne-Aldan High School, and for Montgomery County (Maryland) Adult Education programs. She has also done consulting for Peace Corps, Bread for the World, World Hunger Education, International Educational Forum, and other organizations. Her poems, articles and stories have appeared in some thirty magazines, as well as organization and association newsletters, the anthology But Can They Do Field Work? (OGN Publications), and The Christian Science Monitor. Other books by the author include: The Rest is Silence: Selected Poems (Xlibris), and four volumes published under a biography-oral history imprint, A Reminiscence Sing: Marcia: a Book of Memories; Dave s Words; The Collected Poems of John Stephen Garrett; and The Banyan Tree. She is working on fine-tuning a pictorial essay and memoir on living in Afghanistan from 1973-1976, Children Kept from the Sun; another collection of poetry, This Side of the Truth; and a novella-short story collection named The Hare in the Moon and Other Stories. From her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, she awaits like gifts the actual and visiting presence of three mostly grown-up Irish-named sons, and her husband, Tom.