Jane and her husband, on assignment with AID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, traveled to Pakistan in 1953 with their three children to be faced with an experience that proved to be both funny and frustrating as well as educational. In Down the Drain she outlines some of these issues with humor and empathy. Her detailed memory is enhanced by the letters that she wrote to friends in the States, three of whom saved them and gave them back to her when she returned home.