Dirty Wars and Polished Silver

Starred review from June 1, 2017
A memoir from the former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor.Schuster (A Burning Hunger: One Family's Struggle Against Apartheid, 2004) finished high school in three years and took off to live in a kibbutz in Israel just in time for the Yom Kippur War. The experience whet her appetite to be in the middle of the action, so she returned home and earned multiple college degrees. After a year covering agriculture in Dallas for the Journal, Schuster received an assignment to cover Costa Rica, which was teetering on bankruptcy. Eventually, she met and married Dial Torgerson, a veteran foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and they both worked in all the Central American hot spots. After Torgerson was killed in Honduras, the journalist in Schuster fought to remain in the area to uncover the details of his death. Instead, she was sent to Beirut just after the bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983. Between assignments, the author made only short visits to her family in Detroit, as she struggled with the rocky relationship she had with her mother. After a short, terrifying spell in civil war-torn Lebanon, Schuster was posted to Miami to cover Argentina and its ongoing "dirty war." Through that assignment, she met Dennis, the diplomat who would become her second husband. When Dennis received a post in Malawi, Schuster managed to secure an assignment in South Africa. While some of the narrative is focused on the author's dislike of family and her love life, when the author chronicles her professional life, it transforms into a riveting international thriller. Especially enthralling are her accounts of her evening trips to a Soweto in the throes of apartheid, her evacuation out of Monrovia, and a hostage crisis in Peru. What could have been another average cathartic memoir becomes a page-turner thanks to lucid writing and thrilling storytelling.

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June 15, 2017

In her early years, Schuster longed to be at the heart of the action, even if it involved civil uprisings or war. Her debut memoir highlights the hot spots she covered as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor, including Central America, Mexico, Lebanon, Argentina, and South Africa. Her first husband, Los Angeles Times journalist Dial Torgerson, was killed in Honduras early on in their marriage. When she later arrived in Beirut, the hotel manager asked whether she preferred a room on the car bomb side or the rocket side. After meeting her second husband, career diplomat Dennis Jett, she left reporting but continued to reside in a variety of countries, including Malawi, Liberia, Mozambique, and Peru. When Jett was appointed an ambassador, she was thrown into being, as she calls it, the "ambassatrix" or, senior spouse. Her humorous recounting of the training for spouses includes an explanation of the complex protocol of calling cards. VERDICT This engaging, personal story of self-discovery will appeal to readers who enjoy memoirs of adventuresome and rebellious women.--Judy Solberg, Sacramento, CA

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