Ships In The Desert

by Jeff Fearnside

"Informative, impassioned, and urgent... Ships in the Desert is a clarion call to protect and treasure the 'grain of gold' in 'every drop of water,' to honor our collective humanity, and to acknowledge the grievous losses and courageous hopes that bind us."—Kim Barnes, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, author of In the Coming of Age in Unknown Country
 
In this linked essay collection, award-winning author Jeff Fearnside analyzes his four years as an educator on the Great Silk Road, primarily in Kazakhstan. Peeling back the layers of culture, environment, and history that define the country and its people, Fearnside creates a compelling narrative about this faraway land and soon realizes how the local, personal stories are, in fact, global stories. Fearnside sees firsthand the unnatural disaster of the Aral Sea—a man-made environmental crisis that has devastated the region and impacts the entire world. He examines the sometimes controversial ethics of Western missionaries, and reflects on personal and social change once he returns to the States.
 
Ships in the Desert explores universal issues of religious bigotry, cultural intolerance, environmental degradation, and how a battle over water rights led to a catastrophe that is now being repeated around the world.
 
"Part memoir, part travelogue, part manifesto, Jeff Fearnside's Ships in the Desert unfolds in a series of vivid vignettes that bring the culture and history of Central Asia to life.... I learned a lot from this engaging and valuable book."—Scott Slovic, University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities, University of Idaho
 
"In rich, searching essays... [Fearnside] shows us that we have much to learn from the realities of a country most Americans can't find on a map, revealing how we are connected, and all responsible for living with integrity."—Michael Copperman, author of Two Years in the Mississippi Delta
 
"An intimate and effortlessly wide-ranging account of one of the gravest—and saddest—anthropogenic disasters in the world. Jeff Fearnside is a writer of genuine decency, and this is a very admirable book."—Tom Bissell, author of Chasing the Sea and Apostle

If you enjoyed Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr, To the A Balkan Journey of War and Peace by Kapka Kassabova, and World of In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, then you won't want to miss Ships in the Desert .

136 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2022

About the author

Jeff Fearnside is author of the essay collection Ships in the Desert (SFWP, 2022)—winner of several post-publication awards, including a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award—and two short-story collections: A Husband and Wife Are One Satan (Orison Books, 2021), winner of the Orison Chapbook Prize, and Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2016), winner of an Eyelands International Book Award.

His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in dozens of literary journals and anthologies, including The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review, Story, The Pinch, and Rewilding: Poems for the Environment (Flexible Press, 2020). His writing has been nominated for Best New American Voices, The Best Small Fictions, and four times for a Pushcart Prize.

Lori Messing McGarry, producer and host of Real Fiction Radio, notes, “In Ships in the Desert, Jeff Fearnside has written world-class essays. They bring to mind Octavio Paz and Ruszard Kapuściński.”

In his review of A Husband and Wife Are One Satan for Peace Corps Worldwide, author Clifford Garstang writes, “Each story is a gem, and while they share a setting, each focuses on a unique aspect of Kazakh life rooted in the singular traditions of this little-known Central Asian republic.”

Ideas of place, culture, and the natural environment deeply inform Fearnside’s writing and teaching. He lived and worked in Central Asia for four years, first as a university instructor through the U.S. Peace Corps and later as manager of a prestigious fellowship program in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. He has traveled widely along the Silk Road in Asia, throughout Great Britain and Ireland, and in more than 40 U.S. states.

Awards for his work include a Grand Prize in the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards Program and the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize from the National League of American Pen Women, writing residencies at the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest and the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission.

Fearnside earned degrees in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University (BFA) and Eastern Washington University (MFA). He has taught writing and literature in Kazakhstan and at various institutions in the U.S., currently Oregon State University.

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very talented essayist. Love Fearnside's prose and his ability to be humane and insightful, enlightened and in tune to his natural surroundings.

[Anne Parrish · Rating 5 out of 5]

To open a book is an act of faith. We trust the author will take us on a journey we want to make and will cherish long after its end. There are books we’re drawn to, genres we’re comfortable with, so moving from the known into the new is another act of faith. Jeff Fearnside’s collection of essays, Ships In The Desert, was virgin territory for me. I don’t read much non-fiction and am admittedly, and perhaps ignorantly, focused on my own country, state, and region. But I’m open to learning and this book is a marvelous teacher.

Fearnside joined the Peace Corps in 2002 and was assigned to teach English in Kazakhstan. There he learned first-hand how foreigners perceive Americans, how Christianity is viewed with suspicion, what it means to carry out one’s job in a climate of fear that those who come to educate might, in fact, be there to proselytize and convert, and how political regimes can either foster a free exchange of ideas or repress it. As with all good writing, the new is presented in a light that shines back on the familiar, leading the reader to question her own values and experiences as an American in the twenty-first century.
I most enjoyed the title essay about the death of the Aral Sea at the hands of overzealous and often dishonest efforts to force the land to yield what it can’t, in this case, cotton. In the Southwestern United States, a naturally arid region, water that can’t be spared is also used to grow cotton. The ecological costs are mounting, and the Federal Government will have to decide who gets to use the Colorado River’s water and how much each will get. Fearnside explores how the Russian government in essence enslaved the local population by wiping out the means to their former economic independence. The tale of their lost livelihood, based on crops no longer sustainable under the new farming protocols, is chilling. This is a clear lesson we can all learn from, but as always, the greater issue is, will we?

Fearnside writes clearly and with hope yet is never ingenuous. There are no false notes either in reporting or in tone. I found it enormously refreshing to read the words of someone who believes in compassion, who champions freedom of expression, and doesn’t feel the need to pressure or bully.

I’m so grateful to have read and enjoyed Ships In The Desert, essays by Jeff Fearnside, published by SFWP. Highly recommended. – Anne Leigh Parrish, author of An Open Door

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays about the author's time living in Central Asia. It explores the culture and history of this region and helps illuminate a part of the world that many people here have little knowledge about. I was especially interested in reading the essay about the Aral Sea and the ecological catastrophe that has led to its demise. I was aware that the sea was vanishing, but knew little about the causes or the impacts. The essay in this book filled in a lot of those gaps, showing just how immense the magnitude of this disaster is, why it happened, and what the future likely has in store for the region. It also drew parallels to other parts of the world, and especially to the rapidly diminishing Ogallala Aquifer, which we are on track to utterly deplete far too soon. It is another entirely preventable ecological disaster that we are largely ignoring. This essay is a powerful warning about the dangers of placing short term economic considerations ahead of carefully considered science based analysis of long term impacts, and we really need more of these voices.

But while that essay packed a powerful punch, I found the essay about missionaries to be even more thought provoking. The author does a stellar job of using the rich history of Central Asia to argue for the importance of open dialogue and a free exchange of ideas. His argument that the nations of the region would ultimately benefit from being more open to ideas and beliefs from other parts of the world can be equally applicable here at home. Closing ourselves off from others and their different ways of life is counter productive and risks alienating entire segments of the global community. The path to true peace and prosperity is through openness and a willingness to listen and learn from each other.

This book is a well written collection of stories that immerse the reader in the history and culture of a remote part of the world, bringing it to life and opening our eyes to the struggles of the people who live there. I highly recommend this book to anyone who truly wants to better understand the world and the people we share it with.

[SqueakyChu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very eager to read this book because I knew it was nonfiction about the author's experiences as a volunteer English teacher in Kazakhstan. I wanted to learn about this country as I knew nothing about it prior to getting my copy of this book.

Each captivating and gorgeous essay started with a situation the author experienced in Kazakhstan and then went on to discuss how it affected him personally. Those ideas dug deep into my heart and soul. He dealt with such things as climate change, religious intolerance, and cultural richness. Reading these essays was like probing deep into myself and trying to discover answers to make the world a better place for everyone. So many times while reading this volume, I just had to sit back and think of my own activities in these areas. This book was an inspiration to live well and always try to live better despite difficult circumstances.

It should be mandatory reading for anyone who ever held a volunteer job in a country and culture other than one’s own. The author’s recollections will take that reader, like me, back in time with his or her beloved memories and bring the reader to tears by finding the parallels in our experiences.

I wrote down so many quotes as I was reading this book, I think I wrote down about half of its text! I guess it spoke to me. :)

I didn’t want this book to end. It was so beautiful in expressing its many ideas. I was moved by the author’s sincerity and love for the people who touched his life in Kazakhstan. I look forward to reading more works by this author.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was passed to me to read and review on Sunday afternoon and I finished it before falling asleep on Monday. That is a record for me, but the book came highly recommended and it lived up to the hype. The author is a very talented writer - he creates vivid pictures with an economy of words, he expresses truths and calls to action in clear language for complicated concepts, and he has a gift for capturing the profoundly universal in a small personal moment.

These essays all center around the author's experiences working in Kazakhstan, a place well outside the experience of most Americans/Westerners. (I once visited the Kazakh embassy in DC during the embassy open house weekend and was warmly embraced by the staff because so few people had even bothered to visit them.) The themes include environmental disasters, imperialism/colonialism, capitalist greed, religious bigotry, and the common bonds connecting humanity. Anyone seeing that list would be forgiven for thinking it is a dry or pedantic collection and giving it a wide berth -- which would be a great mistake. The individual essays are all good and their collective power is magical. The copy of the book that I have is intended to be passed among a group of people, so I will be buying a copy for myself to keep -- and a couple more to give away.

The friend who read this book before me noted that she had written down so many quotes that struck her that she couldn't possibly share them all. I am not one for jotting down quotes from books very often, but she was right. I will be including at least a few of them, however, because the thoughts/emotional reactions I had to them are part of the experience of reading this excellent book.

"It's perhaps an innate human characteristic: while we see the Aral Sea vanishing before our eye, we're blinded by issues of greed, political and personal power, egoism, and insecurity. We become committed to our ideas just as deeply as to our self-preservation, especially those of us whose reputations rely on the acceptance of our ideas, such as politicians, academics, scientists, and writers.
To accept the truth means to accept responsibility, and few people want to do this. It's easier -- and frequently more profitable -- to keep throwing out the same outdated ideas, half-baked solutions, half-truths, and outright lies. When presented with conviction, these create uncertainty and confusion in the general population, which is inherently disempowering. Too often, this is exactly what those in power want."
-- This quote takes up the call for change and individual action where the famous quote from Jurassic Park ("your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should") leaves off. So many of the current problems facing the world are because individuals of all sorts -- not just scientists -- particularly those with money and power, were more focused on short-term gain and not long-term impact. And we are encouraged to now to see the distorted reflection of that concept, the idea that we as individuals cannot make a difference and therefore we should not even try.

"Those average citizens who simply hoped to earn a living and raise families became what is euphemistically termed "collateral damage." Such is inevitable in the strange economics of war. It's commonly argued that wars are economically beneficial, but to destroy a country then build it up again is a waste of resources, both material and human. War may temporarily boost an economy through the production of destructive weapons, but the production of nearly everything useful is curtailed or suspended, one reason why food rationing and famine are common during war."
-- This mindset even applied during the Cold War and as part of the war on the environment for pure profit which underlies so much of capitalist society. It is demonstrated by the fact that the so-called developed, enlightened nations always have enough money for war and weapons, even (or especially) if it must be stolen from the poor, the old, the infirm, and the basic needs of the people.

"Environmental destruction is systemic, part of our way of life and doing business, but it's a system that benefits a relatively few wealthy people at the expense of the vast majority. It's devilishly clever in how it moves money around. The public pays in several ways. We pay in taxes that subsidize many companies or in the loss of tax income when these companies are given special incentives. We pay for their products. We pay in absorbing the ill effects of their production. Finally, we pay for the cleanup."

"This uncritical belief that our science and technology can fix anything is arrogant, and to call it anything less is to fail to accept responsibility for our actions. Rather than working continually in crisis mode to fix our problems, we should learn to avoid making those problems in the first place."

"Activities that lack balance reflect the unbalanced nature of those performing them. That we prize economic benefits above all others is unbalanced. That we seek short-term over long-term gains is unbalanced. That we put our full faith in technology rather than in natural systems is unbalanced. this is not indicative of a healthy species."
-- For me, this cuts to the core of greater lessons of COVID19 if we as a species can but implement them, that life is too important to be spent chasing money or making rich men richer and that connection to nature and to each other is more important.

All of these quotes come from the title essay, Ships in the Desert, about the murder of the Aral Sea for nationalistic greed. I marked others from that essay as well as the other essays, but it would be unfair to both the writer and the reader to quote the entire book in this manner, as it would drain the body of the book of its lifeblood and leave only an unsatisfying husk behind. In short -- highly recommend this incredibly thoughtful and beautifully written small book. I look forward to rereading it in the future and to sharing it with others.

[Clifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having been, like the author, a Peace Corps Volunteer (although in a different country), and also having worked in Kazakhstan for a time (a decade before the author), I very much enjoyed these essays that are part memoir and part journalism about some of the challenges that Kazakhstan faces. Anyone who is interested in how the rest of the world works--and everyone should be--would benefit from reading this book.

[Billy Buttons · Rating 5 out of 5]

A WISHING SHELF BOOK REVIEW
19th February 2023

TITLE: Ships in the Desert
Author: Jeff Fearnside
Star Rating: 5 stars

‘A compelling insight into Kazakhstan and the environmental problems facing the world today.’ A ‘Wishing Shelf’ Book Review

REVIEW
I must say, this is a totally absorbing book! The author has worked so hard (and succeeded) in offering readers a fascinating insight into a part of the world few ever visit whilst, at the same time, exploring the many environmental disasters facing humanity today. Although the book looks at cultural history and even the ethics of the Western missionary, there is specific focus on the disaster of the Aral Sea.
I spend two days working my way through Ships in the Desert (wonderful title by the way), and fully enjoyed exploring the author´s thoughts, feelings and facts on so many subjects. Written in the form of essays, I never felt overwhelmed, the writing style descriptive but never overly so – and always accessible. I was fully engaged from start to finish and, on finishing the book, I felt considerably wiser – the author, it seems, did his job.
All in all, I´m very happy to recommend this book to anybody interested in the cultural history of this part of the world. I would particularly recommend it to geography students and anybody studying the environmental impact of human activity. I think they´ll find this author´s work engaging and, most importantly, enlightening.
A ‘Wishing Shelf’ Book Review
www.thewsa.co.uk




This book was entered in The Wishing Shelf Book Awards. This is what our readers thought:
Title: Ships In The Desert

Author: Jeff Fearnside

Star Rating: 5 Stars
Number of Readers:
Stats
Editing: 10/10
Writing Style: 9/10
Content: 9/10
Cover: 2/5
Of the 15 readers:
15 would read another book by this author.
6 thought the cover was good or excellent.
15 felt it was easy to follow.
15 would recommend this book to another reader to try.
Of all the readers, 6 felt the author’s strongest skill was ‘subject knowledge’.
Of all the readers, 4 felt the author’s strongest skill was ‘writing style’.
Of all the readers, 5 felt the author’s strongest skill was ‘clarity of message’.
14 felt the pacing was good or excellent.
15 thought the author understood the readership and what they wanted.

Readers’ Comments
“I particularly liked how the book was presented. It’s not only very accessible, it’s logical too. The author, Jeff Fearnside, is a strong writer capable of putting over his POV in an interesting way.” Male reader, aged 55
“A fascinating insight into the politics and culture of Kazakhstan. I particularly enjoyed his insights into the disaster of the Aral Sea. I’d recommend this book to human geography students. I think they’d find it enthralling and highly educational.” Female reader, aged 64
“Politics, culture, religion, and, always in the background, the suffering of the environment. A superb book highlighting how mismanagement of water can end in disaster. Eye-opening but also, sadly, not a book our leaders will read; they only look short term, never long term.” Male reader, aged 48
“Interesting set of essays on a subject I knew little about. The author’s interest in the subject jumps off every page. Also, I’m happy to report, he can write in a way that’s not overly dull – a rarity in geography-related texts. Personally, I feel the cover is boring and lacks appeal, but the subject is not boring at all.” Male reader, aged 66

To Sum It Up:
‘An accessibly written insight into the politics and culture of this complex part of the world. A FINALIST and highly recommended!’ The Wishing Shelf Book Awards