This is a beautiful memoir of Mary Morris' travels into Central America and personal growth around the 1970's. A woman in her early 30's, she has a successful writing career and traveled extensively. Her journey into Central America is a trip embarked with a heavy heart and personal doubts. Her past needs reckoning and her search for personal equanimity is at last confronted when she moves to San Miguel, Mexico. Unknowingly, she rents an apartment in the poorest part of town instead of the more affluent area where many of the "wealthier foreigners" live. This error in judgement serves to be her silver lining. Skillfully brought to life are the neighbors that become her loving friends and substitute family. As she opens herself to their lives and stories, she feels compelled to face her inner demons.
For many, the prosect of reading another traveling diary may be stultifying. This is not one of those, but an original attempt to make the relationship of a woman's personal journey inside herself and her global journeys she bravely explores on her own.
In her past, Mary has been physically and emotional abused by some of the men in her life. I thing it is extremely important to note that in those years, many of the social/counseling/activist support groups were non-existant, or at the least, in their infancy. For Mary, her travels, and those that she met in the wake of her trips, served as her counselors and support groups.
There were a wide assortment of characters that she met in her travels, and her gift is to be able to write about what each of them meant to her. Many of them are truly unforgettable and the times she writes about capture the humor, strength and sorrow of their lives. San Miguel serves as her "base camp" and she plans many visits to the heart of Central America. Knowlingly, she ventures into some of the most unstable countries in the area (San Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia) and trusts her inner instincts to be her compass. Constantly challenging herself in these tension filled areas, subjecting herself to extreme discomfort, poor traveling conditions and appalling lodging, she nevertheless is able to note the beauty of the world, but not so idealistic that she can't complain and feel total despair. Life is NOT perfect on the road, and I respect that she does not front herself off to be in a constant state of traveler's ecstasy.
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