Citizen journalist Kelly Hayes-Raitt visited Iraq just 5 weeks before the U.S.-led bombings and invasion in 2003.  She returned a few months later to find the people who touched her so deeply.  Living Large in Limbo: How I Found Myself Among the World’s Forgotten is her personal story of recovery from a mid-life loss by working in the Middle East with Iraqi and Palestinian refugees.

Go behind the headlines with Kelly to see the stark impact U.S. military policies have on real people.  Join her while she:

      • Interviews Iraqis — both before and after the invasion of Iraq.
      • Sneaks into a Bechtel meeting to witness Iraqis shut out of the rebuilding.
      • Is detained at gunpoint at a dicey checkpoint in the West Bank.
      • Visits an Israeli peace village where Jews and Arabs live cooperatively.
      • Commemorates devastating massacres at Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
      • Accompanies Iraqi refugees living in Syria to UN relief efforts.

…And much more.  Go behind the headlines with Kelly!  Sign up at right –> to receive Kelly’s exclusive reading of her book’s first chapter, “Tongue-Tied,” about her interaction with an Iraqi beggar girl.  PLUS, you’ll receive a special pre-publication discount of Living Large In Limbo!

What others are saying

“The title of this book — Living Large in Limbo — conceals an irony. Limbo, in my mind at least, is a vague, colorless, passionless space. The violence-wrenched, often American-disrupted landscapes of Kelly Hayes-Raitt’s memoir are, yes, ill-defined, hard to categorize — but so is Joan Didion’s California. But colorless and passionless — anything but. More than anything else Limbo stands as an antidote, a passionate counterpoise to the usual journalistic distancing deployed to write about places like Syria and the Phillipines.
Hayes-Raitt reminds us that to see the world clearly, we need to be anything but “embedded” inside the American cocoon of an embassy or an occupying army. ”
Carl Pope
former Executive Director, SIERRA CLUB
“It’s rare that we get a chance to look into the inner thoughts, fears and opinions of people from “the other side” of America’s foreign policy. Kelly goes places most of us dare not…into the brains and bowels of Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, the Philippines, and Syria. She asks questions, listens, and reports what she sees and hears in beautiful and sometimes painful prose. Traveling with Kelly makes you realize that in war, no one has a monopoly on brutality. She also leads us to recognize the humanity on both sides of a conflict. And in a couple of chapters, I’m happy to report, there are glimmers of hope.
This is a book that makes you rethink.”
Rita Golden Gelman
author, TALES OF A FEMALE NOMAD: Living at Large in the World
“Living Large in Limbo:  How I Found Myself Among the World’s Forgotten shows the stark impact US military policies have on real people.  Kelly Hayes-Raitt’s citizen journalism takes readers to pre- and post-invasion Iraq, to dicey checkpoints in the West Bank, to a remarkable peace village in Israel, to devastated Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, to refugee relief efforts in Syria and to post-militarized Philippines, where 20 years after the US closed its bases, Filipinos still live with the aftermath.  A must-read for any thinking traveler.”
testimonialAuthor
testimonialAuthorDescription