A Door in the Earth
Parveen Shamsa, a college senior in search of a calling, feels pulled between her charismatic and mercurial anthropology professor and the comfortable but predictable Afghan-American community in her Northern California hometown. When she discovers a bestselling book called Mother Afghanistan, a memoir by humanitarian Gideon Crane that has become a bible for American engagement in the country, she is inspired. Galvanized by Crane’s experience, Parveen travels to a remote village in the land of her birth to join the work of his charitable foundation.
Young Afghan American Parveen Shamsa travels to her family’s land after recently graduating from college and reading the gut-wrenching bestseller Mother Afghanistan. She arrives to the poverty-stricken and secluded village where Dr. Gideon Crane’s traumatic events happened years before, leading him to write his remarkable memoirs. As Parveen meets and befriends the villagers, she soon discovers the discrepancies between the book and the facts of what really happened to him, to Fereshta who died in childbirth, and to the clinic which was built in her memory.
This novel is a powerful tale about the power of misinformation and of political lies, with a marvelous country and simple, beautiful people in the backdrop.
My 5-starred books:
A Door in the Earth, by Amy Waldman (released 2019 & favorite read)
Necessary People, by Anna Pitoniak (released 2019)
The Escape Room, by Megan Goldin (released 2019)
The Chain, by Adrian McKinty (released 2019)