Joan Fry

As a newlywed in the early 1960s, Joan Fry spent a year in a Kekchi Maya village in British Honduras (now Belize) with her then-husband, an anthropology graduate student. Fry was just twenty years old when they set out on their adventure. The couple lived in a house very similar to their Mayan neighbors, and Joan had to learn basic survival skills, like cooking whatever was available over a fire, carrying water for their daily needs, doing laundry in the river, etc. The village was at least nominally Catholic, and the Catholic priest hired Joan to teach the village children. Readers see the village and its residents through Joan's eyes as she makes mistakes but eventually learns to fit in and even makes friends from among her neighbors.

The publisher's book summary is a little misleading. Although Fry now knows how to cook the foods she describes using the recipes she shares, she didn't seem to do more than basic cooking during the year she lived in Belize. Most of the food described in the book was cooked by her neighbors and shared with her. Fry seemed to spend more time with the neighbors than did her anthropologist husband, and I'd guess that she had a better understanding of them, too. Fry doesn't overshare personal details of her relationship with her husband, but it's apparent from what she does say that the couple were ill suited for each other and probably married too young. I also suspect that her husband was depressed and might have been better off in a different field of study. I wasn't surprised to learn from the afterword that their marriage didn't last long after their return to the U.S. Their relationship brought to mind The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald's memoir about starting a poultry farm in rural Washington State as a young bride. That marriage didn't last, either. Recommended for readers with an interest in Mayan culture, readers preparing for cross-cultural living, and readers of survival narratives.… (meer)