Nicaraguan Gringa: Claiming a Home

After her father’s death, Sarah Rutledge returns from North Carolina to Nicaragua in an attempt to prevent the family’s property from being expropriated by the Sandinista government. The novel begins with Sarah’s childhood on the coffee farm where her British-American family has lived for almost a century. Natural disasters, civil conflicts, and political changes force her to ponder who belongs in Nicaragua, just where she belongs, to whom she belongs, and what belongs to her. Author John Keith’s life was significantly shaped by two social transformations of the twentieth century, the civil rights movement in the United States and the new vision of mission and development by churches in Central America. In Canebrake Beach: A Novella and Four Short Stories (2012) he reflected on the relationships of black and white people in the South over a span of seventy years. In Nicaraguan Gringa: Claiming a Home, he explores the evolving relationships of nations and their citizens as ruling regimes ebb and flow.

JOHN M. KEITH began writing fiction as a student at Duke University where he was awarded the Anne Flexner Memorial Prize (presented by William Styron). His recent books are Complete Humanity in Jesus: A Theological Memoir (2009), True Divinity in Christ: A Testimony of Faith and Hope with Four Short Stories (2010), and Canebrake Beach: A Novella and Four Short Stories (2012). John is a retired Episcopal priest living in Fearrington Village, North Carolina with his wife, Rilla. John graduated magna cum laude from Duke University and cum laude from Harvard Divinity School. After John served churches in North Carolina, Nicaragua, and France, the majority of his ministerial career was in Alabama, including Marion, Opelika, and the Montgomery area where he lived for twenty-four years.