Imagine a remote community in Paraguay, South America, where you read by candle light, draw your water from a well, cook your meals on an open fire and attend to your needs in a rickety outhouse. To reach the nearest bus stop and telephone requires a long hike along a road rutted by ox carts that lasts for hours. In Shade of the Paraiso, Mark Salvatore relates his Peace Corps* experience (1989-91) in such a place beginning with his first day in the country—the day of a coup. His memoir transports the reader through his two years of volunteer service with its challenges, its failures, its joy, and his wedding in a leper colony.

*Shade of the Paraiso recounts Salvatore’s experience and he does not represent Peace Corps, Peace Corps Paraguay, or any other volunteer’s experience.