A Fish Fell From the Sky

This is a novel about a doctor, who as a foreign aid worker has been kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and left for dead in an unmarked grave. Despite the grim premise, the heroine doctor spins a tale through her memory as she confronts her demise. Given her situation, her story both fascinating and twisted, relates a humor only her personal recollection can subscribe. She grew up as the love child of two young teenagers, who, beginning on a farm, then followed a hippie trail to California, and finally settled in South Asia during the sixties and seventies before returning to a farm in rural Ontario. Along the way, she learned foreign languages and a quirky philosophy through the influence of her upper middle class white mother and part native American father - a sometime poet, farmer, singer, importer, bum, and cook. And summoned to her aid is a specter of their past, the spirit of an aboriginal boy who leads them in their time of need. There is a race with time, as her disappearance becomes apparent, and her father calls on his old trading partner - now a warlord - to find his daughter.