About Us Find a Book Selling Books Events Calendar Contact Us Home » Author Readings » Caroline Kurtz with A Road Called Down on Both Sides Caroline Kurtz with A Road Called Down on Both Sides Posted on Jul 9, 2019 in Author Readings, Author Signings | 0 comments Join us for an evening with Caroline Kurtz and her memoir: A ROAD CALLED DOWN ON BOTH SIDES: GROWING UP IN ETHIOPIA AND AMERICA. Caroline Kurtz grew up in the remote mountains of Maji, Ethiopia in the 1950s. Inside her mud adobe home with her missionary parents and three sisters, she enjoyed American family life. Outside, her world was shaped by drums and the joy cry; Jeep and mule treks into the countryside; ostriches on the air strip; and the crackle of several Ethiopian languages she barely understood but longed to learn. Caroline felt she’d been exiled to a foreign country when she went to Illinois for college. She returned to Ethiopia to teach, only to discover how complex working in another culture and language really is. Life under a Communist dictatorship meant constant outages—water, electricity, sugar, even toilet paper. But she was willing to do anything, no matter how hard, to live in Ethiopia again. Yet the chaos only increased—guerillas marched down from the north, their t-shirts crisscrossed by Kalashnikov bandoliers. When peace returned, Caroline got the chance she’d longed for, to revisit that beloved childhood home in Maji. But maybe it would have been better just to treasure the memories. From the age of five, Caroline Kurtz grew up in Ethiopia, the child of Presbyterian Church missionaries. The family lived in the church’s most remote mission station in the mountainous regions of southwestern Ethiopia near the town of Maji. Beginning at the age of ten, Caroline attended boarding school in Addis Ababa and then Alexandria, Egypt. Caroline left for college in the United States at eighteen, unprepared for U.S. culture. She eventually married a childhood sweetheart, also the child of American missionaries to Ethiopia, and the couple returned with their family to live and work in Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan. She and her sister, the American children’s author Jane Kurtz, recently launched Ready Set Go Books for early Ethiopian readers. Ready Steady Go has now printed and distributed 70,000 books in Ethiopia. When her husband died in 2013, Caroline bought, gutted and remodeled a house in Portland, Oregon. From there she returns regularly to Ethiopia, bringing solar power and economic development options to women in Maji. Caroline Kurtz Look at our complete events calendar Store Locations & Hours Corvallis Book Bin 215 SW 4th St 541-752-0040 10am - 6pm daily Face masks are required. Buying counter open Tuesday-Saturday, by appointment only. Call the store or email corvbookbuyer@gmail.com to set up an appointment. __________________________________________ Salem Book Bin 450 Court St NE 503-361-1235 10am - 7pm daily Face masks are required. Buying counter open daily by appointment only. Call 503-361-1235 to set up an appointment. Author Events Last Friday Poetry Group Presents: Jennifer Perrine Second Saturday Storytime – Poetry Edition 2nd Annual Salem Poetry Festival! Nadene LeCheminant with The Gates of Eden Last Friday Poetry Group Presents: Terra Incognita Caroline Kurtz with A Road Called Down on Both Sides All content copyright of The Book Bin, Inc. 2014