#162 Disastrous Passion

EAWs love trashy novels. They love making fun of them, reading them ironically, and feeling superior to the general population of folks back home or in-country who fall prey to the clutches of badly written pulp fiction.

It goes without saying, then, that most EAWs secretly (or publicly, in an ironic way of course) enjoy Disastrous Passion, the humanitarian romance novel.

And now, finally, Disastrous Passion is available in its entirety, as a complete book:

“They sacrificed everything for the poor… but was there enough left for their love?”

Mary-Anne and Jean-Philippe come from different worlds. She’s a simple girl from America’s conservative deep south, trying to break free of the societal bonds that hold her back. He’s a hardened, cynical man of the world haunted by a dark past. Both are thrown together in the chaos of a disaster response after a massive earthquake in Haiti. Can Mary-Anne ever love a man like him?

Can Jean-Philippe ever find a soul-mate in a woman like her? Will stress and the danger of a disaster zone ultimately keep them apart? Or will their love smolder into a white-hot flame of passion?

A rollicking, thought-provoking, hilarious, and sometimes somber story of humanitarian workers trying to make sense of work and life (and maybe get a little action) in the aftermath of a massive natural catastrophe.

Nowhere else can EAWs indulge in fantasy action that so resembles their context. No other form of edutainment is so specifically aimed at humanitarian relief professionals and those innocents interested in joining the profession. Nowhere else do the institutional stereotypes we all know and love come into such full play, via characters that both have hyphenated first names. Nowhere else is there such a true-to-EAW-life portrayal of gendered realities, deployment behavior and existential questioning about aid itself.

And all this deep thinking can take place while intellectually cackling at the ridiculously familiar yet slightly over-the-top viewing of an emergency response through the literary lens of the age-old romance novel and simultaneously being unintentionally aroused at the thought of a breathless and guilty night in the arms of Jean-Philippe, the virile, hot French MSF EAW with the tortured past or a steamy 15 minutes trapped in traffic in a white Landcruiser with Mary-Anne, the pure, passionate and annoyingly evangelical do-gooder.

On the plane, at the office, in the team house, in the shower or wherever else an aid worker needs some, er, relief, he or she can be sure to find an enthralling, passionate and thought-provoking escape by devouring a few pages of Disastrous Passion.

Disastrous Passion, a humanitarian romance novel by our very own J. Get it here.