By JOTR staff
Once upon a time, two Peace Corp volunteers were facing a lonely Christmas in the sub-Sahara.
They were thousands of miles from family and friends.
They had each other, true. But they would learn that they also had their African friends.
Their young Muslim neighbor, Seydou, took them on a trip that changed how they looked at the world.
SEYDOU’S CHRISTMAS TREE is the true story of how a Muslim youth in Togo, West Africa, led his two friends through what they thought was a barren wasteland and taught them that ugliness and beauty are mere words.
Muslim, Christian, animist, whatever – it doesn’t matter.
Joel Thurtell tells this story in spare language, aided by his photos of people, homes and terrain where he and his wife, Karen Fonde, M.D., worked as Peace Corps volunteers in the early 1970s.
SEYDOU’S CHRISTMAS TREE bridges the gulf between races and creeds, showing that we are all part of the same cosmos, and that we are all part of the oneness of humankind.
Thurtell was a newspaper reporter for more than thirty years at the Detroit Free Press and the South Bend Tribune.
His blog, joelontheroad.com, was named “best example of an independent blogger raising hell” by MetroTimes, Detroit’s alternative newspaper.
The journalism faculty of Wayne State University named Thurtell “2011 Journalist of the Year.”
Thurtell wrote UP THE ROUGE! PADDLING DETROIT’S HIDDEN RIVER, published in 2009 by Wayne State University Press with photos by Patricia Beck. The Library of Michigan chose UP THE ROUGE! as a 2010 Michigan Notable Book.
Other books by Thurtell are, PLUG NICKEL, a collection of essays about restoring a wooden sailboat, SHOESTRING REPORTER, a how-to book for aspiring journalists with the subtitle, HOW I GOT TO BE A BIG CITY REPORTER WITHOUT GOING TO J SCHOOL AND HOW YOU CAN DO IT TOO!
His debut novel is CROSS PURPOSES, OR, IF NEWSPAPERS HAD COVERED THE CRUCIFIXION.
Hardalee Press ($16)
ISBN: 978-0-9759969-1-1
LC: 2009906577
