Still Love in Strange Places: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Beth Kephart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2002

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 love, she finds, means accepting not only the stranger who is one's lover but also the stranger's history - in this case, a country, language, people and culture utterly foreign to a young American woman. Kephart's transcendently lyrical prose has already made her a finalist for the American National Book Award. In this new work, illuminated with her own photographs, she offers her testament to the ties that bind: the love, by choice, of a man, and the love, by necessity, of his homeland.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"It is an anxious earth they live on," Kephart (A Slant of Sun) concludes, describing the El Salvador she's come to know by marrying one of its sons. It is a land born of massive geological movements (due to "conspiratorial lithospheric plates") and equally troubling ethno-political upheavals, from the Mayans to the Nahuatls and the Spanish to the modern-day oligarchs. Kephart sees herself as white-bread American, blandness personified, going to El Salvador in search of her husband's wild stories, ostensibly to pass them on to their son but, more fundamentally, to feel at home in her husband's home. It's a risky proposition, but Kephart realizes that listening requires "trying to forget who you are and what you think you need to know so that you can be... inside the church of another's memories." So she perseveres, and pieces come together, just as the Spanish language, initially "a gaggle of indivisible birds" starts making sense to her gringo ears. Kephart's eye for detail is extraordinary: she depicts the local cemetery as resembling the "aftermath of a pi¤ata party." While basically enthusiastic, Kephart does have moments of self-doubt. Why is she so interested in her husband's stories, but no one's interested in her own quiet past? Should her husband's family's workers really be considered "dear friends," beneficiaries of the family's noblesse oblige, while other peasants are clearly the victims of upper-class greed? Anyone who has ever loved an outsider and tried to make it work by embracing that otherness will find great resonance in this beautiful, heartfelt memoir. Photos.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

As a writer, Kephart has moved from love of her child (A Slant of Sun) to love of friends (Into the Tangle of Friendship) to love of her husband, whose Salvadoran background she explores here.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393050742
• ISBN-13: 978-0393050745
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,272,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Travel > Latin America > Central America > El Salvador
  • #76 in Books > History > Americas > 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

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Luminous gem, June 12, 2002

By 

Sy Montgomery (New Hampshire, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Love in Strange Places: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This was the most surprising and beautiful book I have read this year. It is a poem, a watercolor, a dream half-remembered upon waking, a world rebuilt. You will be swept away, and it will stay in your heart for a long time.
In stunning words, Beth Kephart writes of a coffee farm where her husband grew up in the jungled hills of El Salvador. It is a farm inhabited by souls living, mythical and dead: here among the dusty roads, crowded graveyards, and lush coffee plantations we meet ghosts of 11th century Indians, Siguanaba (the witch who haunts the doomed) and especially Don Alberto, her husband's beloved and legendary grandfather, who founded the coffee farm and died there "anchored into the hands of those he loved and into the memories of others."
This book is a testament to memory, and to the endurance of our deeds. It is a book about a beautiful and fecund land lacerated by earthquakes, snipers, and greed. It is a dramatic book by a brave woman about an exotic place, but it is a book that speaks to all of us about what holds the world together: memory, family, courage, love. Read it, and give it to the people who matter most to you. This is a brilliant work.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a beautiful trip, April 3, 2002

By 

Jon D. Katz "jdk" (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Still Love in Strange Places: A Memoir (Hardcover)

The way I see this evocative and quite heroic book is this: This is a beautiful journey not only to another place, but it's a story, really about a brave, sensitive, shy writer, who happens to be an impassioned mother and wife who is trying to figure out how to understand her (the) new American Family, of which she is a wonderful chronicler. This is an epic adventure, really, but not just to an exotic place but deep inside of what it means to be in a family in America in 2002. The very idea of family is radically different than just a few years ago. Kephardt had a longer way to go than most of us to understand where she fit in, where her family came from, and how she could cope with and understand it. What an admirable trip and what a lucky family to have her.
This book is quite relevant to anybody who loves anybody and is frightened of their enormous responsibilities therein. It's a monument ot the bravery of those rare spouses, moms, sisters who just won't ever quit on the people they love. The fact that it's beautifully written, and very evocative is a huge bonus. She is bright, funny, and unsparingly honest about herself. This is a big, rare and great work. Honest.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mesmerizing! Wise, lovely, and astonishing., April 7, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Still Love in Strange Places: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Beth Kephart writes with enormous talent and careful lyricism about her discovery of El Salvador through the eyes of her husband, who will always be a native of that country although he lives in the USA. At first it is almost like entering a dream to be swept up in this unfolding tale, but the drama of a country as embattled as El Salvador--and the drama of the people who live there--make it far more urgent than any dream. And this book also slowly makes so clear the fact that when you love someone and commit youself to another person you are taking on that person's history and upbringing. This is a wonderful book.