Still Love in Strange Places [Paperback]

Beth Kephart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2003

A love story and a journey across the continents of marriage.

When Beth Kephart met and fell in love with the artist who would become her husband, she had little knowledge of the place he came from—an exotic coffee farm high in the jungle hills of El Salvador, a place of terrifying myths and even more frightening realities, of civil war and devastating earthquakes. Yet, marriage, she finds, means taking in not only the stranger who is one's lover but also a stranger's history—in this case, a country, language, people, and culture utterly foreign to a young American woman. Kephart's transcendently lyrical prose (often compared to the work of Annie Dillard) has already made her a National Book Award finalist. In each of her memoirs she has written about love, using her own life to seek out universal truths. 19 b/w photographs

Editorial Reviews

Review

An exquisite gift, a poet's text on love, travel, spiritual sustenance, and the dark magic of El Salvador. (Jayne Anne Phillips )

With richly evocative prose than can only be called masterful, Beth Kephart illuminates here the questions we somehow keep forgetting to ask: how is it possible to fully love our mate without knowing and loving, too, where he or she was engendered? Still Love in Strange Places is a revelation and a feast! (Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog )

I don't know how it is possible to take something as simple as words and make them into something as magnificent as this book, but Beth Kephart surely does. Here, again, is her exquisite devotion to language and to family. Here, again, is a book you will want to keep close at hand. (Sue Halpern, author of Four Wings and a Prayer )

In the best tradition of the memoir, Beth Kephart's Still Love in Strange Places intimately speaks to the reader about the daunting limits of memory, the irrepressible power of blood ties, and the impossible task of fully knowing those we love. Her exquisite prose, as sensuous as the El Salvador land she describes, conjures the wounds of an irretrievable past and offers the salve of wisdom, compassion, and promise. (Maria Laurino, author of Were You Always an Italian? )

About the Author

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of a memoir trilogy. She has written about writing and the imagination for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and Parenting. She lives in Devon, Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (June 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393324478
• ISBN-13: 978-0393324471
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,698,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > Travel > Latin America > Central America > El Salvador

More About the Author

Following the publication of five memoirs and FLOW, the autobiography of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, I've had the great pleasure of turning my attention to young adult fiction. UNDERCOVER and HOUSE OF DANCE were both named a best of the year by Kirkus and Bank Street. NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, A HEART IS NOT A SIZE, and DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS were critically acclaimed. In October YOU ARE MY ONLY will be released by Egmont USA. Next summer, Philomel will release SMALL DAMAGES. I am at work on a prequel to DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS, a novel for adults, and a memoir about teaching. Please visit my blog: http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Find yourself a piece of grassy ground, lie back and read..., August 7, 2003

By 

Richard L. Pangburn (Bardstown, KY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Still Love in Strange Places (Paperback)

A favorite quote from the book:

"Reading begins with the body, with settling in. Up, in the crook of a tree, or down, on the green grass below. On the floor beneath the ceiling fan, on the shore beside the receding sea, over a plate of clam linguini, in the bathtub, late at night. Reading begins with settling in, with the posture of surrender.

Even the youngest children understand the high art of surrender. They cede to a bedtime story just as they finally cede to sleep, floating on the raft of words they hear their parents read.

When we surrender to books we are made new. We are reinvented, we are fortified, we are blessed. New perspective seep into our politics and talk. Fresh sympathies arise. Raw memories are roused awake. Urgencies begin to clamor. Even our bodies change when we submit to books, when we allow ourselves to live them. Our hearts beat that much quicker or that much slower, our muscles lengthen our or tense, our stomachs turn, and just as suddenly, our stomachs grow pacified. Reading clams the anxious, heals the heartsick, distracts the oppressed, sustains the lonely. Reading is like singing. We can hardly live without it.

In this confused, tormented, dangerous, exotic and terrifyingly beautiful world, books exist for many reasons: to defend, to protect, to complain, to berate, to rule, to prove, to instruct, to insist. Books can be manifestos and they can be screeds. They can oppose and impose, they can boast and promote, they can offend. But so many books, so much of the time, are created most simply and also most thrillingly because writers dare to dream and because readers dare to let thme. Because history can be entered into and because fantasy can enthrall and because the personal can be made to speak for every one of us."