Home and Away

Frances Emery is an editor and writer living in Nepean, Ontario.

These 18 essays, anecdotal but illuminating, take the author from his
boyhood home in England; through Mexico, Peru, Belize, and Guatemala in
Central America; to Egypt, Turkey, and Peru again; and then to the tiny
island of Grenada in the Caribbean. The two longest essays that follow
deal with Canadian Native issues. Essays on Fiji, Australia, and other
parts of the South Pacific finally bring him around to a return trip
(but not “home”) to England.

The author evokes the flavor of the place, and the personalities of its
people, through a skilful use of vivid description and picturesque
metaphor. He describes it all as he sees it, with all his own biases
hanging out, which is appropriate in a work that never purports to be
the definitive analysis of any situation. What Wright excels at is
bringing a place and its people to life in the imagination of his
readers.

I recommend this book highly, both as entertaining reading and as
informative analysis of situations and places that are becoming
increasingly important to us all. The essays were written originally as
travel pieces, evidently over a period of several years.