The Advocacy
Eliciting the eros of subtle presence, Melissa Fischer wrests poetry from the caustic cauldron of Obuasi, a mining boomtown in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. West Africa Gold dams the Gyimi River, stagnating the water source of Gyimiso Kakraba, a village of subsistence farmers who refuse to accept a modern world that has forsaken the art of human connection. Compelled by the devastation of water-borne diseases, Gyimiso Kakraba enlists Louisa Lehmann, a civil engineer and Peace Corps volunteer, to intercede on their behalf. Lehmann exudes pride in her profession, honors her fluid gender, and yields to the greatest lesson of all taught by the people of Gyimiso Kakraba deep in Ghana's equatorial forest.
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"Profound..."
-Allen Mendenhall, Southern Literary Review
"Lehmann...[is] a delightful, complicated character..."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Melissa Fischer celebrates in precise and brilliant prose the steadfast and innovative heart of the engineer - harnessing technology in service to humanity; yet, with equal clarity and sincerity, Fischer mourns the tragedy of engineers complicit in the destruction of the environment and the concomitant desecration of the human spirit."
- DR. KARL LONGLEY, PE, Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering, California State University, Fresno; Chair, California Central Valley Water Quality Control Board
"Melissa Fischer conveys in poetry what cannot be truthfully expressed in prose. It made me sad to reach the end. I will certainly read it again."
- W. E. ABRAHAM, author of The Mind of Africa; Advisor to President Kwame Nkrumah
"The Advocacy is both a beautiful and disturbing story; exactly what good books are supposed to be."
- JUDY REEVES, author of Wild Women, Wild Voices
"This is a novel of the intellect, where Fischer grapples with the meaning of our shared colonial history and how far our responsibility as global citizens extends."
- GABRIEL BRANDT, Peace Corps Volunteer, Ghana, 1992-94; Professor of Chemistry, Franklin & Marshall College
"...this novel reveals the ambiguity, the mystery, and ultimately the reward of embracing a new culture while holding on to the core of your being."
- ERIN BAKER, Peace Corps Volunteer, Ghana, 1992-94; Professor of Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
"The Advocacy does not 'other' anyone. It is masterful in this way."
- MADELEINE MADER, Peace Corps Country Director, Ghana, 2004-07
"While reading The Advocacy, the term that came to mind over-and-over was, cura personalis; a Latin phrase taught with tenacity by every Jesuit influenced institution. "Caring for the whole person" - body, mind and spirit comes screaming through the pages of every chapter."
- PROFESSOR DANIEL B. OERTHER, PhD, PE, Missouri University of Science and Technology; Three-time Fulbrighter; former Senior Science Advisor at the U.S. Department of State; and incoming President of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists
