I am such a slacker, but my friend isn't.

I have been a really bad blogger.  I love reading all your blogs and staying current, but I have not been posting and returning the favor.  And for that I am sorry.

Life has been pretty busy over here.  I have picked up new clients and their schedules and mine weren't meshing well, so I am doing what any good doula would do and am adjusting myself and my schedule to theirs.  And for whatever reason they all want to meet at the crack of dawn.  Now, you probably know this about me already, but I am NOT a morning person.  I am whatever is the polar opposite of a morning person.  So, this is a HUGE undertaking getting me and my late-night self all synched up with the morning folks.  By 2 in the afternoon I am exhausted!  Good Lord!

Anyhoo, that is why I have not had the inspiration to post anything.

Today, I am here to tell you all about my friend Mary Helen and her NEW BOOK!  This is a sequel so you probably want to check out the original book as well.

Here is a link to her blog and her post about the book:

Let me tell you a little back story about Mary Helen and me.  We met when we were both living in the same neighborhood in Guadalajara.  We have kids that are the same ages.  We each have a boy followed by a girl and it was natural for our kids to have great play dates.  They were so cute together.  I will have to dig around and find some pictures of them to show you.  I think they had more fun at Mary Helen's house because she always painted their faces and they had great imagination play over there.

So Mary Helen is a journalist and was living in Chile during the Pinochet years and met her fabulously fun and charming British geologist husband down there.  That is where she started gathering the beginnings of her first book, Soldiers in a Narrow Land.

There were many times when Mary Helen needed to focus on her writing and research and I had the kids all over to my house so she could focus for just a few hours.  We had so many lovely times together having dinner parties, play times, and our husbands played tennis on Saturday mornings.

And who knew that many years later and many moves later, my family would end up in Chile?  We lived there just after her book came out.  The family who became our very best friends in Chile had this book on their shelves and when I commented on it, she told me that her company had made it required reading for all their employees who did business in Chile.

And just so you don't think this is just me being all biased and proud, click here to read an unbiased review of this book.

It has taken many years and lots of trips back to Chile to complete the sequel of this book.  Here is a look at the cover:

I have ordered the Kindle edition to carry with me AND I ordered the hardback to send to Mary Helen to sign for me and put on my shelf next to the other one.  

If you are interested in reading something that is not the usual light summer reading that you won't remember five minutes later, you should definitely check out these books.  If you are interested in the very recent history of one of our neighboring countries in this hemisphere, you should read these.  And if you ever want to travel in Chile, one of the most beautiful and diverse countries on the planet, I highly recommend you read these just to have some backstory about the culture and the people from the last 50 years.

And sign up to read her blog, she posts some really interesting articles not always carried by the mainstream news.