The Marble Room
Bill Hatcher

Mountain climber, geographer, and spiritual questioner, Hatcher shares his experiences in personal and moral growth from his 1970s-era Fundamentalist roots to his days in the Peace Corps and then his exposure to the realities of Tanzania in the late 1990s. Writing with dry wit, self-deprecating insight, and a readily accessible voice, Hatcher shares the discoveries he made as a relatively cloistered, postgrad American who found himself challenged intellectually and emotionally by material poverty and by believers who held an array of religious truths different from his own. The trope of mountain climbing as an irresistible call—and the presence of Mount Kilimanjaro as a proving ground‐is fit smoothly into his social and political awakenings. Like Howard Thurman (With Head and Heart, 1979) and Gretel Ehrlich (A Match to the Heart, 1994), Hatcher not only illuminates his own life but the life of the reader as well. An intriguing choice for interfaith book discussion.—Francisca Goldsmith, for Booklist