Peace Corps stories bring local writer a book deal

[ Originally published on: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 ]

DEERFIELD -- Can a pampered young woman from Brooklyn find meaning -- and maybe a decent restroom -- in the Third World?

That's the rhetorical riddle Eve Brown-Waite set out to describe in a travel memoir she's been writing over a 12-year period, beginning with a Peace Corps stint in Ecuador and a later three-year-long stay in Uganda with the husband she met as her Peace Corps recruiter.

Her husband, John Waite, is executive director of the Franklin County Community Development Corp.

Just as compelling, perhaps, is the story of how Brown-Waite, a nutrition director for Community Action's Parent Childhood Development Center, turned a series of short stories into a ''fish-out-of-water travel memoir'' that she's sold as her first book to an imprint of Random House in a five-publisher bidding war.

''When I lived in Uganda, I was bored, and my mother said, 'You want something to do, write a book,' so I started writing short stories,'' said the 44-year-old mother of two, who moved with her family to Keets Road in 1999 after they had lived in Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan is where ''Take Me Home'' begins and ends, but Brown-Waite is saving the story of those three years for a second book, once she's finished work on the story of ''following John -- a Peace Corps poster boy -- through the Third World.

Wearing a ''safari chic'' outfit for her Peace Corps interview, the self-described ''pampered Jewish (recent)college graduate'' fell in love during her 1987 interview. There, she recalled in a recent interview, ''I wasn't sure really about the Peace Corps, but I was very sure about John.

''I sort of kept doing the Peace Corps thing to impress John, and before I knew it, I found myself in the jungle. Actually, it was a swamp in Ecuador, saying, 'Take me home, take me home.'''

She worked at a home for street boys -- some runaways, others ''throwaways'' by impoverished families -- teaching English, helping to cook and teaching first aid, plus helping some of the kids contact their families. Then she got homesick and left the two-year program after only a year.

She returned home to New York and to Waite -- ''I had to convince him he could still be madly in love with me even though I was a Peace Corps dropout.''

She got a master's degree in public health from Hunter College; he got a master's in international affairs from Columbia University. They got married -- and then Waite was offered a development job by CARE in Uganda.

''We packed up the cats and the cappuccino machine and he was raring to go,'' Brown-Waite says.

''I kind of wanted to go but wasn't really sure.''

It meant leaving behind a career she had started in AIDS prevention in New York, but Uganda was seen as the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, and Brown-Waite figured, ''Where better to go? I'll go and get a job and it will be great.''

But while many international agencies were doing major AIDS research in Uganda, ''What I didn't know was how far up and how remote John's posting was.

''Nobody was doing any AIDS work up there. They had plenty of AIDS, but most people believed you got it from a voodoo hex.''

In addition, ''We had no electricity, no paved roads. They were still in throes of a civil war'' after the overthrow of dictator Idi Amin.

From the time they arrived in 1993 until they left in 1996 for Uzbekisan, they were frightened by guerrilla activity, by hand grenades going off in their community, and, at one point, by being held hostage in their own home.

Though there were unnerving experiences, Brown-Waite said, ''Most of the time it was beautiful and peaceful. We had a beautiful life, and the people for the most part were tremendously friendly and helpful.''

She did volunteer work in their community of Arua, near the Sudanese border, as well as freelance consulting work in the southern part of the country. Meanwhile, she wrote stories on a battery-powered computer she could recharge during the three hours when electricity was provided each evening.

Before her daughter, Sierra, was born nearly 13 years ago and she returned to the United States to give birth, she asked a Hunter writing professor for advice about her stories.

''She said, 'This is beautiful, but this is a book. You should work on it.''' Brown-Waite remembered. She returned to Uganda with her 5-week-old daughter and her stories, and for the next six years in the Third World, continued to write without help.

It wasn't until five or six years ago that she began approaching writers in this area. And, after watching her book be rejected several times by small publishers, she decided she needed an agent.

''I don't know why I didn't give up,'' she said. ''I just had it in my head I wanted to write a book, that there was a story that needed to be told because I wanted to tell world about Uganda, and about our work.''

She found an agency where people seemed open and an agent whose online description said she was a mom, a writer and loved memoirs of women -- especially if they took place in exotic locations.

''I said OK -- this is me,'' said Brown-Waite, who sent the agent a packet of what she'd written. ''I literally prayed every day for her good health, that she would love what she read. And she did.''

For a couple of months, the agent did ''a dance'' in which Brown-Waite was asked to change this or that, and was at one point asked to ''let go of something that was very, very close to my heart. She said it didn't fit. Everything she asked me to do, I did. She was sort of asking me to jump through these hoops for her, and I was.''

Finally, the agent agreed to represent her and for two months helped her write a proposal.

''She found the book in the story,'' Brown-Waite said. ''I'm good writer, but I don't know anything about making books marketable. I didn't know you don't need a book to sell in nonfiction, you need a proposal. It was like I'd built a house without the blueprint.''

Brown-Waite, who now has six to nine months to write her book for Broadway Books, had her proposal with sample chapters sent off to 40 publishers in late June.

''She said, 'Cross your fingers and pray, whatever you do. If we're very lucky and everything goes well, by the of end next week we may have one publisher who likes it. I want you to be prepared: there are going to be a lot of rejections. That's just the way it is.'''

That was on a Thursday. By 11 a.m. the following Monday, Brown-Waite's agent had called to say they'd already had ''a nibble.'' By that evening, an e-mail told her six publishers were interested.

On Tuesday, there was not one offer, but two.

''And when we turned that offer down, they came back with more money,'' said Brown-Waite. ''Can you imagine what that feels like?

''I send short stories and get rejections from magazines I've never even heard of. I got one today. Meanwhile, I've got 5 publishers bidding for my first book! It was unbelievable.''

In the end, her book was sold at auction, with five publishing houses bidding. She was even offered a two-book deal by Harper-Collins. Camped out at New York's Algonquin hotel with her husband, she accepted an ''unbelievable'' six-figure offer with the publisher of Bill Bryson and Frances Mayes.

Brown-Waite, who was a contest finalist for a nonfiction in The Iowa Review and for a fiction story she submitted to Glimmer Train, said she's trying to get her mind around how she could be rejected for stories that were contest finalists when she's turned down a double-book deal from a publisher like Harper Collins.

''That's the nature of the business,'' she said. In fact, a Hollywood agent has already expressed interest in ''Take Me Home,'' which she hasn't even written yet and will take an estimated 1½ years to be released.

She's already thought about who she'd like to play her: Sarah Jessica Parker, who's also curly-haired and short and Jewish. Or maybe Kate Hudson? Maybe Matthew McConaughey to play John Waite, the Peace Corps ''poster boy?''

Along the way, she admits, they disagreed about her honest portrayals of Ugandans and Ecuadorans.

''That's how I am,'' Brown-Waite said. ''I see it, and I call it the way it is.

''John kept reading my stories, saying, 'Can't you tone that down a little, dear? It might be true that people stink to high heaven, but that's because of the water shortage and they're living so on the edge, and bathing is a luxury we First Worlders take for granted.'''

Brown-Waite toned her stories down along the way, but her agent confronted her: ''Eve, you're funny and you're forthright and tongue in cheek. Please don't tone that down. Be that way.''

When the author responded, ''My husband wanted me to tone it down,'' her agent reminded her, ''Let your husband write his own book. You have this voice that's very honest. Write with that voice.''

Brown-Waite, who's written humorous columns for two online publications, now finds herself in the ironic position of making a bundle of money for writing about her real, gritty Third World experience.

But she added, ''I think there's such beauty in it. I wanted to do well and make money for my book and my family. But more than anything, I wanted to bring attention to this little corner of the Third World where we lived. And I think it will.''

Brown-Waite said that ultimately, she and her husband loved Uganda and the people she met there.

''My real, real, real dream is to have it made into a movie and to be filmed on location in Arua, Uganda, because that will bring attention and economic development there,'' she said.

She and her husband have even envisioned returning to do economic development work, maybe with treated mosquito nets to fight malaria.

That's the way to dream, Brown-Waite said: ''Big, in Technicolor and very detailed.''

You can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 269

 

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