Marie McNair Alvarez-Calderon

Summer in February: A Memoir of Lima, Peru and Its Beaches Marie McNair Alvarez-Calderon

This memoir begins on the Texas Gulf Coast and quickly moves to Guadalajara, Mexico. The prologue ends with shattered dreams and life-threatening danger in a Spanish-speaking country.

The body of the book begins fourteen years later, when the author marries into an established Lima family and returns to danger in another Spanish-speaking nation. In those days, Peru is besieged by the "Sendero Luminoso," the Shining Path Maoist terrorists. Everything the author knows for sure comes into question. There is 8,000% annual inflation, an unstable political environment, a stratified culture, different viewpoints on career, religion, and family. There are corporate traumas, a major house fire, kidnapping, death, and a devastating earthquake.

Take an armchair trip to Peru. Feel the chill of terrorism, contrasted with the warmth of an elegant Latin family. Dine on new and delicious food. Bask in the sunshine of private beach communities. Live inside gated walls and guarded compounds. Attend an exclusive wedding in private park. Go where no tour can ever take you. Experience what is like to leave a stable but gray life and enter "el mundo de sol y sombra", the world of shadows and sun.