The Foreign Service Journal, October 2011

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 35 and then trying to raise a family overseas amid dramatic events in Morocco, South Africa, Egypt, Libya, Sudan and Algeria. Nan Chase was born in Brussels and grew up in Cam- bridge, where she was introduced to watercolors as a stu- dent at the Shady Hill School. An art major, she graduated from Wellesley College and spent a graduate year at Har- vard studying fine arts. When World War II intervened, she went to Washington, D.C., to work for the Navy De- partment and the Office of Strategic Services. In 1943, she married Peter R. Chase. During nearly 30 years as a Foreign Service spouse, she raised five children and taught art and elementary grades in the American Schools in Cairo, Khartoum and Algiers. She returned to the United States in 1970 and taught third grade for 10 years in Tarrytown, N.Y., spending summers in Rockport, Mass., at artist workshops. In 1986 she re- tired and moved to her mother’s house in Rockport, where she was able to study painting more seriously. Jonathan Chase was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Sudan, Algeria and Libya before returning to the United States in 1969. He worked in the travel and telecommunications industries and then in health-care ad- vocacy for 30 years. He has written several plays and is cur- rently working on “The Passionate Pilgrim,” a review of political play-making during the Tudor-Stuart transition pe- riod in England. FICTION, POETRY AND ART The Foreign Service Traveler James Rivera, River Investment R.I.C.O. LLC, 2011, $25.95, paperback, 54 pages. This collection of black-and- white photographs from around the world was shot and assembled by James Rivera, a Foreign Serv- ice computer and telephone spe- cialist with the Department of State. A passionate self-taught photographer, Rivera chroni- cled his impressions of the places his work has taken him in his two years with State, including Bangkok, Bandar Seri Begawan, Addis Ababa, Luxemburg and Manama. High- lighting the variety of experiences and exotic locales that await a Foreign Service employee abroad, this charming collection also reflects Rivera’s own enthusiasm for the ca- reer that has given him the opportunity to see and do so much. AMiami native, Rivera intends to donate 25 percent of all profits from the book to the Shriners Hospital for Chil- dren, where his eldest daughter has received orthopedic treatment. Farishta Patricia McArdle, Penguin Books, 2011, $25.95 hardcover, 368 pages. PatriciaMcArdle’s debut novel Farishta , which means “angel” in Dari, ably weds emotional pro- fundity to literary realism in this gripping tale set in northern Afghanistan. Some two decades after losing her husband in the 1983 Beirut Embassy bombing, FSO Angela Mor- gan leaves a stagnant position inWashington, D.C., where she had cloistered after the tragedy, to take up a post with a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mazar-i-Sharif. There, although the region is physically so safe that the soldiers she encounters eschew helmets and armor, she re- peatedly experiences hostility and suspicion on all fronts: from the soldiers and other all-male colleagues in her unit and from provincial officials and local men. Frustrated by her inability to effect meaningful change through her post, she begins sneaking off base, clad in a burka, to bring aid to refugees at a nearby camp. As she becomes their “farishta,” she finds new purpose and a means of cleansing herself of her trauma, earning the usually grudging respect of those around her, the story charts the deterioration of security and crumbling of for- merly cordial relations with Afghans in the leadup to a vi- olent conclusion. Farishta was featured at AFSA’s Sept. 27 Book Notes event, where the author discussed its origins in her own experience. Patrica McArdle, the daughter of a U.S. Marine, grew up on military bases. Before joining the Foreign Service in 1979, she was an officer in the U.S. Navy and, before that, a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Paraguay. Toward the end of a nearly 30-year diplomatic career, she served as a member of a PRT in northern Afghanistan. This rich background shines through in the realism of her material and the poignancy of her prose. She is now retired and lives in Arlington, Va. C OVER S TORY