Letters from Afghanistan
By Eloise Hanner 

     In the age of technology's immediate response and email, Eloise Hanner reminds us of the power in a written letter.

     Hanner's Letters from Afghanistan recounts her time spent in Afghanistan as a member of the Peace Corps in the early 1970's. Hanner tells her story by way of the letters that she wrote to her mother during her time away and, as a result has written a book that is both entertaining and involving.

     Hanner takes us to a city in Afghanistan that most Americans have become familiar with for all the wrong reasons over the last two years. She is stationed in Kabul as an English teacher. Her vivid description of the capital city is strikingly different from what we now see on the evening news. Her early letters home are predictable for anyone who has ventured into a land that differs from the American landscape - frustration, confusion, exhaustion and self-doubt are evident in her first days in Afghanistan.

     However, as her determination to succeed in her difficult task keeps pushing her forward, the tone of her letters begins to change and the hope, excitement and satisfaction she is experiencing are almost tangible on the pages. The people she encounters, the places she visits and the struggles she faces down become more compelling in each weekly letter she sends home.

     While her story may be one that has been told before - stranger in a strange land - it is her chosen format of the letters that makes this book work. The letters are personal, simple and detail her experiences in a way that make it seem as if each letter was written to the reader rather than her mother. The letters share the range of emotions she goes through, yet manage to avoid being overly sentimental. Her final letter, written on her final night in the small house that became her home in Kabul, eloquently displays her conflicted emotions, as she is happy to be returning to the United States, yet saddened to leave a place that became her adopted home. In a traditional narrative format, Hanner would have been hard pressed to convey her feelings so succinctly to readers. In the letter, it is there for us to see.

     Hanner admits in the epilogue that, given the chance today, she would probably not return to Afghanistan because of the violence and instability. A wise choice. Fortunately, though, Eloise Hanner did travel to Afghanistan thirty years ago and brought back a tremendous story that should be required reading for anyone looking to travel abroad and for anyone who just enjoys getting a good letter from a friend.