Krista Shellie

Katie Baird’s memoir, Growing Mangos in the Desert, is a tribute to the remarkable people whose lives intertwined with hers throughout her Peace Corps experience in a remote village in Mauritania. With spell-binding factual detail, interspersed with personal emotional and physical challenges and magnificent humor, she shares an amazing story of leadership, community, commitment, politics, humanity, perseverance and growth. The memoir unfolds as three pours of tea that span nearly three decades, an ingenious metaphor understood only upon reading.