My Mother's Land: Tales and Tastes of Liberia

Finally living her dream of teaching in Spain, Dena is on top of the world—until she receives a call that her mother is in the hospital. When her mom passes away, Dena is left with the helpless sorrow that comes when you’ve lost a piece of your heart. Time passes, but she feels stuck. She decides the only way she can truly move forward is to take a few steps back and return to her mother’s home town: Monrovia, Liberia. As Dena sets out to uncover her mother’s pre-war life, in a post-war nation, equipped with little more than optimism and an invitation from an aunt she barely knows, she expects to meet a few relatives and maybe see the house her mother grew up in. What she finds is a country bursting with natural beauty and idiosyncrasies, feisty yet hospitable family members, dreary rainstorms and mouthwatering cuisine. Despite an unexpected language barrier in an English-speaking country, Dena begins to feel at home, finding that life there involves a little bribery, a lot of laughs... and a great deal of self-discovery.