Bill Hatcher

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Marble Room

At 27, Bill Hatcher was at a crossroads. Brought up in an evangelical household in the American Bible Belt, his religion had provided no answers to his parents' broken marriage or, indeed, his own divorce. The key to his salvation would come from a most unlikely source: a flyer calling for Peace Corps volunteers. A year later, Hatcher finds himself in Tanzania, East Africa. As a geography teacher at an all-girls' boarding school, he's expected to broaden his students' horizons, but, instead, it is his own worldview that is challenged - by encounters with local shamans, dangerous ascents on Mounts Kenya, Kilimanjaro and Meru and especially a friendship with a Muslim student. Through tragedy and triumph, by questioning the very core of his being, he manages to escape the confines of his "marble room" and gain a new understanding of himself and God. Filled with breathtaking accounts of death-defying mountain climbs and the spectacular beauty of the African countryside, this memoir is both a tale of adventure and self-discovery - and proof that even the most naive and insular American can achieve a spiritual awakening.