Tonga

Having spent months in Tonga, I'm not entirely surprised by the latest videos of Nuku'alofa in flames. It's a sleepy South Pacific capital, and there's always a lot of feeling rumbling underneath the placidity.

My main Tonga interest is the Peace Corps murder of 1976, and there's news: the publication of former Peace Corps volunteer Jan Worth's novel Night Blind, which chronicles a young volunteer's response to the murder, in fictionalized terms. I 'm excited because the historical case has never got the attention it deserves and Worth's book will bring more light on a gross injustice. And Night Blind is a beautiful book. It deals with issues of 70s sexuality in spiritual, non-nostalgic ways, and tells a great story while it's at it.

The story involves the awakening of young Charlotte Thornton as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga, and the backdrop is the murder of volunteer Melanie Porter, allegedly by Mort Friedman. The tale is inspired by the murder of Deb Gardner (by Brooklynite Dennis Priven) in 1976.

Frank Bevacqua, a good friend of Gardner's, says that Worth's description of the way the murder affected her is "hauntingly well done and will probably conjure eerily similar feelings to any reader who was there at the time." (Not that it heals the wound for him. "It's been thirty years, but closure comes about in very personal ways over any period of time that it may take.")  read more »

I'm in Alanis Morissette withdrawal.  read more »

A few months back, in the South Pacific, I met a lady named Olive from the Save the Whales movement.  read more »