Jan Worth published her great novel Nightblind herself (with iUniverse) and thank goodness she did. She worked on it for about thirty years she says in the Acknowledgements.
Worth’s book is splendid and delightful, wise and witty and rich. Twenty times better, say, than something like Eat, Pray, Love. Or any other number of such pieces that are eighty percent ad-spin and 15 percent book. The missing five percent in my equation there I’ll let you guess or fill in for yourself.
Worth has three great stories to tell—-the famous or notorious Peace Corps murder in Tonga in the late 70s when one volunteer killed another, her own tale of growing up while a volunteer, and a big screen portrait of what the Peace Corps itself was like in those relatively early days, with Vietnam and the 60s hovering in the background, and in the foreground a marvelous depiction of Tonga and the Tonganese. All three stories are told, intricately interwoven and densely worked, as love stories. All of this is difficult to hold together and hold balanced, but Woth does it and she keeps the book moving forward with a compelling narrative movement and arc.
Thank you so much for these kind comments. How did you come across the book?