Ships in the Desert

In this linked essay collection, award-winning author Jeff Fearnside analyzes his four years as an educator on the Great Silk Road, primarily in Kazakhstan. Peeling back the layers of culture, environment, and history that define the country and its people, Fearnside creates a compelling narrative about this faraway land and soon realizes how the local, personal stories are, in fact, global stories. Fearnside sees firsthand the unnatural disaster of the Aral Sea--a man-made environmental crisis that has devastated the region and impacts the entire world. He examines the sometimes controversial ethics of Western missionaries, and reflects on personal and social change once he returns to the States. Ships in the Desert explores universal issues of religious bigotry, cultural intolerance, environmental degradation, and how a battle over water rights led to a catastrophe that is now being repeated around the world.

Author: Jeff Fearnside
Publisher: Santa Fe Writer's Project
Published: 08/01/2022
Pages: 144
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.43h x 5.43w x 0.24d
ISBN13: 9781951631154
ISBN10: 1951631153
BISAC Categories:
- Travel | Essays & Travelogues
- Travel | Asia | Central

About the Author
Jeff Fearnside is the author of the short-story collection Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air and the chapbook A Husband and Wife Are One Satan, winner of the Orison Chapbook Prize. Other awards for his writing include a Grand Prize in the Santa Fe Writers Projects Literary Awards Program, the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize, and an Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Oregon Arts Commission. His work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies such as The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review, Story, and many others.