46 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Panama City, and Islamabad. He has also worked as a reporter with The Miami Herald, the Associated Press, and The Middlesex News in Framingham, Massachusetts. Drinking from the Stream is his first novel. The Silversmith’s Secret Stephen A. Seche, Koehler Books, 2025, $18.95/paperback, e-book available, 260 pages. In April 1949, shortly after landing at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv, gifted silversmith Moishe Azani presses a note into the hands of the American pilot who has just delivered hundreds of Yemeni Jews like himself to the Promised Land of Israel. For more than 60 years, the note sits untranslated and unread, until it comes into the possession of Hank Amato, the pilot’s grandson. Unemployed and aimless, Hank seizes the opportunity to travel to Yemen and retrieve the jewelry Moishe was forced to leave behind, a decision that leads him—in the company of a charming female journalist—to a corner of the globe where poverty, corruption, and terrorism have taken root. Hank finds himself caught up in a terrorist scheme, but he may also find the makings of a fresh start. Stephen Seche served as U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 2007 to 2010. Other postings over the course of a 35-year career with USIA and the State Department included Syria, India, Canada, Bolivia, Peru, and Guatemala. Istanbul Crossing Timothy Jay Smith, Leapfrog Press, 2024, $16.99/paperback, e-book available, 256 pages. Syrian refugee Ahdaf earns a meager living in Istanbul helping others make the crossing to Greece—a perilous line of work. But it’s no riskier than what he would face if ISIS discovered the truth of his sexuality. When both the CIA and ISIS approach Ahdaf about transporting high-profile individuals and serving as a double agent for their causes, his life is thrown into turmoil. As his feelings for one of his clients come to light and a possible relationship grows, the decision is taken out of his hands. A new choice lies before him, between two men and two different futures—assuming Ahdaf lives to see either of them. Istanbul Crossing is the story of adversity, love, and the courage of an ordinary man who must brave impossible situations to survive. Timothy Jay Smith is married to Michael S. Honegger, a former Foreign Service Reserve officer and retired Peace Corps chief financial officer. The pair have held multiple short- and long-term assignments in Thailand, Poland, and Albania. Esperanza: Daring to Dream Beyond Borders Irving Tragen, Arlington Hall Press, 2024, $25.99/paperback, e-book available, 371 pages. This second book of a trilogy dealing with El Salvador in the mid-20th century, and the obstacles to its political and socioeconomic development, follows Esperanza, a girl born in a poverty-ridden rural village. She completes the eighth grade before tragedy strikes, and she decides there is no future for her in her village. Esperanza, her mother, and her infant brother set out for the capital, where she finds work as a cook in the households of American officials and works to build a better life. Irving Tragen, the 103-year-old author, worked at the State Department and USAID for 33 years and spent another 14 at the Organization of American States, including nearly a decade as the executive director of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission. During his career, Tragen worked in all 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries. His autobiography, Two Lifetimes as One: Ele and Me and the Foreign Service, was spotlighted in The Foreign Service Journal in October 2019. Book One of this series, Mañana Is Yesterday, was published in 2023. The author thanks the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) for its support in publishing this book. Arlington Hall Press is an ADST imprint.
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