Farewell, Four Waters

     BOOK REVIEW:   In fourteen days, the life she knew would end on the streets of Kabul.   All Marie needed was a few stamps and signatures--the mandatory paperwork necessary for the Afghan government--and she could hold literacy classes in the rural town of Shektan. Her hope: Afghan women would learn to read.
    Suddenly, shots resonated. An aid worker killed at an intersection in Kabul. The community scattered. Most decided to say farewell. Not Marie; she chose to stay, to teach. But she was unaware that this choice would make her a pawn at the center of a local feud.
    Kidnapping was Marie's worst fear. She didn't know treachery was more deadly. 

     BOOK REVIEW:     Farewell, Four Waters is a story of an aid worker's frantic last two weeks before a sudden departure from her Afghan home. A story revealing deep roots, helpless desperation, swirling events too swift to process, and finally, the finding of God through it all. 

     Not a true story in itself, but each event is true of one person or another known by the author. Kate McCord is a pseudonym. To protect those involved, she could not tell her own story, or even use the real names of the people in this book. But some events are her own, and everyone is inspired by someone touching her experiences there. 

     This book, while not actually nonfiction, tells us a bit of the life and customs and unrest of an aid worker in Afghanistan. It is certainly not a bed of roses, not easy in the slightest. But very rewarding. In the Author's Notes, Kate discloses that in a way, this really is her story. The events may not be quite the same, but the feeling, the closeness, the finding God---they are. The book is not written in the usual smooth flow of a fiction story, but rather, reading more through the mind of Marie, hearing her process what is going on. Short. Almost choppy. Making sense of swirling events that cannot be fully understood. The loss. The helplessness. Feeling alone, yet very much there. A story full of feeling. Feeling that cannot be expressed fully without being written this way. It works. It's beautiful. 

     Kate McCord has written two other books, both of which I have read. In the Land of Blue Burqas is a nonfiction book about her actual time in Afghanistan. Why God Calls us to Dangerous Places is self-explanatory in the title. Not so much on her time there, as on why she went, and how it affected her, her family and friends, and the Afghans she met. All three books are well worth reading. 

  I received a copy of this book from MOODY PUBLISHERS and was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.