title: The Marble Room: How I Lost God and Found Myself in Africa
author:  Bill Hatcher 
description: Mountain climber, geographer, and spiritual questioner, Hatcher shares his experiences in personal and moral growth from his 1970s-era Fundamentalist roots to his days in the Peace Corps and then his exposure to the realities of Tanzania in the late 1990s. Writing with dry wit, self-deprecating insight, and a readily accessible voice, Hatcher shares the discoveries he made as a relatively cloistered, postgrad American who found himself challenged intellectually and emotionally by material poverty and by believers who held an array of religious truths different from his own. The trope of mountain climbing as an irresistible calland the presence of Mount Kilimanjaro as a proving groundis fit smoothly into his social and political awakenings. Like Howard Thurman (With Head and Heart, 1979) and Gretel Ehrlich (A Match to the Heart, 1994), Hatcher not only illuminates his own life but the life of the reader as well. An intriguing choice for interfaith book discussion. --Francisca Goldsmith
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  > CHAPTER 1
  
  “I hate it when they come to me scrambled.”
  
  Fingers snapped inches from my nose, causing my eyes to cross. I shifted in
  confusion, inspecting the room I unexpectedly found myself in.
  
  There was a steel table, a single light overhead, two chairs, no door, and no
  windows.
  
  Um… Where the hell was I?
  
  “I’m a god.”
  
  My head tilted with a soft chuckle exposing my lips. “Sure buddy.”
  
  The problem was, he could be right. I should be asleep in my small suite in
  Chelmsford, Mass. The night had been a bust. A few drinks, a strike out with
  some lonely divorcee, and a few more beers in solace with my cat. After that I
  watched a dino flick that lulled me into snoring on the couch.
  
  None of that scenario translated to being locked inside a panic room with some
  young go-getter in an expensive suit.
  
  The college kid smirked, running a hand through his well-groomed brown hair.
  When his hand was free of his locks - poof, like magic - there was a folder
  clutched in his grip