Mary Ann ShankIt is not the decades of versatile, lively writing that makes this historical novel so moving, nor the fact that MaryAnn really was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Somalia. No, it is the Somali people themselves, notably the Baidoans, who create the excitment, the sheer joy of this romantic adventure. MaryAnn hadn't intended to write about Somalia, for every time that she tried over the past several decades, the work fell short. She intended to write a children's story about a little fairy, but when she looked up, the words were there, blazing words of goddesses and devastation. She new the time had come. No more 'war lords in Somalia; only real people in real villages, pulled together by the intertwining threads of a lesbian finding her place in a very challenging world. Read More Read Less