Because the World is Round
A story of global travel, personal growth, and family responsibility through the lens of teenage girl in 1969.
Fifteen-year-old Jane was trapped. Trapped in high school in Dallas, Texas where her classes were too easy and her classmates were too conventional. Trapped in service to her mother, a polio survivor who used a wheelchair.
When her parents sold their automobile brake-repair business in 1969, they withdrew Jane from her high school to travel the world, visiting India, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Yugoslavia and Northern Europe. As she traveled, Jane was pushed to reconcile her dual role as responsible daughter and as teen in the late sixties, the era of Bobby Fischer, The Beatles, and Hair. Because the World is Round reckons with what it means to be an individual, a caretaker, and a traveler in a vast and changing world.
Jane Saginaw is a student in the Ph.D. Program in Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, where her interests include American domestic life during the Second World War. Before returning to graduate school, Jane was a trial lawyer in Dallas and served in the Clinton Administration as the Regional Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region Six.
