Reviewer Maria Savva : Maria is a lawyer and writer from the UK. She has published four novels and three collections of short stories and she is currently editing her fifth novel. She is also a resident author/moderator for BestsellerBound.com. You can find out more about Maria by following on her WEBSITE.
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.