Growing Up Away From Home: a Cold War experience

In this memoir about an American family sticking together and finally coming apart in foreign lands during the Cold War years, Barbara Hyatt recounts how she was 28 years old when in 1958, she and her husband Pete Culler and their two young daughters Christine and Cynthia were transferred by his company to their first overseas assignment. Over the course of the next 12 years the family lived in Guatemala City during the anti-American riots; Tehran, Iran during the Shah's repressive reign; Sao Paulo, Brazil while its capital city of Brasilia was being built; Lima, Peru during the communist military junta; and Cali, Colombia when FARC was kidnapping its victims. "Growing Up Away From Home" is the story of a close family, a failed marriage, and the unforgettable adventure of living overseas. It is about a young mother facing domestic challenges during her husband's frequent absences on mysterious business, and possibly spy-craft, assignments. There are moments of enchantment: Swimming and dining on caviar at the Caspian Sea; transatlantic ocean voyages; a magical road trip through post-World War II Europe. And there are times when the family finds itself facing potential danger and serious choices during periods of violent political upheaval. At one point Barbara realizes her expatriate children had attended a single school year on three separate continents. With the aid of letters home, daughters' memories, and an introduction and afterword by editor Chris Culler who came to appreciate the double meaning in her mother's title, this is a nostalgic yet tough-minded, unflinching tale about "all four of us - our mother, our father, my sister and I - all of us, growing up TOGETHER away from home."