Dear Exile: The True Story of Two Friends Separated (for a Year) by an Ocean »

Hilary Liftin grew up in Washington, DC. In 1991 she graduated from Yale University, where she was the editor of the Yale Literary Magazine. She has worked in book publishing as an associate editor of nonfiction and literary fiction and as an editor/producer at several websites. She currently develops online products for Muze, a provider of digital information about music, videos and books, in New York City.

Kate Montgomery was raised in Wakefield, Rhode Island. She studied at Yale and Columbia Universiities, and has spent time teaching in both Czechoslovakia and Kenya. Kate has previously co-authored a non-fiction book A Teacher's Guide to Standardized Reading Tests. She is currently on leave from her job as a high school English teacher in Harlem to raise, with her husband David Hackenburg, their new son, Kobi.

In simple terms, Dear Exile is a great read. The letters between New Yorker Hilary Liftin and Peace Corps volunteer Kate Montgomery transport you to worlds as different as an isolated Kenyan village and the New York real estate market. Both Kate and Hilary -- and reading their personal correspondence makes you feel like you can call them by their first names -- have a talent for telling good stories with wit, self-awareness, and an eye for detail that brings to life the room they are in and the people they are with.

But beyond being a collection of colorful, well-written stories, Dear Exile is a relationship. When Kate and Hilary wrote these letters, both women were just out of college and trying to find their way in the world. Kate went to Kenya. Hilary moved to New York City. Their stories are particular to the places they live, but their experiences are universal.

The letters below, taken from different parts of the book, show both the adventurous storytelling side of the book and the underlying bond between the authors that makes Dear Exile a personal story for any reader.

Publishers Weekly

One woman has the privilege of a happy, secure marriage while confronting the poverty of a Third World country. The other enjoys the luxuries of a big American city while struggling to find romantic happiness. In this humorous, touching, real-as-daylight collection of letters former college roommates Liftin and Montgomery exchanged during their year apart, we see the support and humor two 20-something women can offer each other as they move down disparate paths.

In the small Kenyan town where she and her husband are spending 12 months as Peace Corps volunteers, Montgomery realizes that, although she can gamely adjust to eating rancid goat stew, living with fist-sized spiders and having her house exorcised of genies, the tasks of caning students until they bleed and teaching them to "sit down and shut up" while their headmaster uses their textbook money to buy himself a new pickup truck are beyond her limits of cultural assimilation. Meanwhile, back in New York City, Liftin tackles her own obstacles, including finding an apartment in Manhattan, surviving the embarrassing loss of her "cybervirginity," enduring the threats of a paranoid neighbor and recovering from the pain of unreciprocated love. Though Liftin's problems can pale in comparison to Montgomery's, the duo's correspondence makes it clear that their relationship has thrived precisely because of their unconditional recognition of the immediacy and importance of each other's travails.

Many women readers will be reminded of their own intense college and postcollege friendships, and may be inspired to try to reconnect with lost friends. This is a smoothly sewn book that appeals on several levels: as engaging travel literature, as a witty exploration of modern women's lives and as a testament to the power and blessing of friendship.