Author: Deb Olin Unferth
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9323-0
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Click Here To Purchase Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War

When Deb Olin Unferth was 18, she fell in love with George, a fellow student, who was rather rebellious, and bit strange.  Being in love, it seemed young Deb would do anything for her boyfriend.  She changed her religion from Jewish to Christian, to her family’s dismay, and followed George on his journey to ‘foment’ the revolution in Central America.

The naiveté of youth leads Deb to somewhere she is totally unprepared for, and the often treacherous journey to Nicaragua leaves an impression on her that remains to this day.  From reading the memoir, it seems that some twenty years after her venture into this unknown territory, she is still deeply affected by that trip.  Indeed she made a journey back to Nicaragua after ten years and then continued to visit the places she’d been to in her youth for years, as if the country had some kind of hold on her.  

This book is one woman’s story about how love can make people do the strangest things, and also how first love can leave its mark for a lifetime.  It appears, from reading the book, that the author retains a deep curiosity about her ex-fiancé, George (he proposed whilst they were on the road and they broke off the engagement soon after.  They lost touch a few years after returning home).

On their trip to join the revolution in 1987, Deb and George find jobs and get fired, sleep in spider-infested hotels, get very ill, get robbed many times, and almost drown at sea.  There are very interesting stories about their adventure told in a humourous and sentimental way by the author.

The book is very well written, and kept me interested.  It’s quite thought-provoking and insightful in parts.


Click Here To Purchase Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War