The adventures of an American family in South America are recounted through their letters written during the 1960s in the new memoir “Under the Condor’s Wing: A Memoir of South America” (published by Lulu) by Ginny Tschanz. The memoir is the portrait of a marriage in which husband and wife adapt differently to extreme changes in culture, language and geography.

Mac Tschanz, a geologist, was an energetic advocate for a national geological survey. Both he and the author were Stanford-educated observers who wrote of their personal lives amid the mixed Spanish and Indian culture in the ecological extremes of the towering Andes Mountains and the tropical Amazon rain forest. Their memoir shows how Mac Tschanz was conflicted in his desire to help bring Bolivia into the modern world and his desire to leave the unique Indian culture as he had found it. Meanwhile, his wife, Ginny Tschanz, struggled to cope with illness, servants, childbirth and the formidable problems of keeping house in the isolated, 12,000 foot city of La Paz, Bolivia.

“I want readers to understand the vast changes which have occurred in South America since the Sixties when Americans were welcomed and held in high regard,” says Tschanz. “Currently, Bolivia is a socialist state which no longer hosts the US Agency for International Development nor the Peace Corps. In 2008 the American ambassador was declared a ‘persona non grata,’ but the embassy still operates under a Chargé d’ Affaires.”

“Under the Condor’s Wing”

By Ginny Tschanz

Hardcover | 6 x 9in | 268 pages | ISBN 9781684708567

Softcover | 6 x 9in | 268 pages | ISBN 9781684708543

E-Book | 268 pages | ISBN 9781684708550

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble