Places in Time: Reflections on a Journey

Review of Places in Time; Reflections on a Journey In 1971, Maxine Schur and her husband left the San Francisco Bay area for an unusual honeymoon. They travelled from California through Mexico, Central America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and, finally, New Zealand. Years later, based on letters she sent home from that trip, she wrote Places in Time; Reflections on a Journey. Named Best Travel Book of 2006 by the North American Travel Journalists Association, the story recounts their one and a half year journey. Her vignettes are specific to a particular culture and universal in their humanness. I was intrigued by all her portrayals, but three stand out - a Turk named Yakup hosting them in his one room mud and cardboard house, Mme. Carroux in a tiny Swiss town showing la jeune madame how to churn butter and make sausages, and the blind guard tending shoes at the Herat's Friday mosque in Afghanistan. There were life threatening times, too. As the couple waited for a ferry in a Mexican bar, the deputy sheriff, with whom they'd been chatting and drinking, pointed his gun at them and said, "I could kill you both real easy." Schur draws her readers into each scene, not only as she experienced it thirty five years ago, but also through the glasses of time. Poetry, Wordsworth wrote, is "emotion recollected in tranquillity." Indeed, Schur has given us an evocative, poetic rendering of an amazing trip.

I loved this book. Ms. Schur caught the sprit of the `60s with her lovely memoir of her 18 month honeymoon when she and her husband literally traveled the world. The many strangers who took Ms. Schur and her husband in and made part of their families are amazing, and Ms. Schur's ability to communicate, even silently, with people of so many cultures takes ones breath away. This book is a poignant reminder of a time, not so very long ago, when a young American couple could freely travel through Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, Afghanistan and Pakistan without undue fear and of innocence the world has lost. I can't recommend this book highly enough!