PATCHWORK: Stories from the Dining Table By Isabelle Actis-Malumeja, Marlene Athie, Urmilla Khanna, Vim Maguire, Rosalie O’Donnell, Ki Harley Roberts, Denise Young. A group of women meet regularly around a dining room table to write. They share the product of their individual muses in this charming new collection of personal stories sure to resonate with many in Washington's international community. These colorful recollections fall somewhere between fiction, memoir and confessional writing. Each recalls a vivid moment in the writer's life, a turning point, or a cultural/matrimonial "epiphany," that clarified a past moment and made it easier to make peace with a new country or to move on in a relationship with greater understanding. The book is dedicated to Australian author and inspirational creative writing teacher, Trish MacIntosh, who started the group in 2003 and has written the Foreword. "Trish has gone to live in London," said collection contributor Ki, "but the group continues to flourish and support each other's work with new members replacing original ones." The story titles tweak readers' curiosity and pull them in. Take for example, Bananas are yellow in Zimbabwe too, where Isabelle contrasts her challenging experience of getting married in Zimbabwe with life in France. In Malcolm she gives a riveting description of one man’s fight for life and dignity with a twist at the end. Coming of Age is Vim’s story about the last ever game of cricket for a Sri Lankan girl on the cusp of biological womanhood. In Dharma, a young gypsy girl comes to the rescue of Urmilla, then a mother-to-be in rural India and in Grandma’s Dilemma the same author contemplates geographical and generational shifts. El Ropero by Marlene is a poignant story about family dynamics and the difficulty of being accepted in a new culture. In A new beginning Ki writes about how a woman comes to understand her man in a series of flashbacks during the birth of their third child. She emerges with a growing understanding and a more complicated picture of the psyche of the man she has chosen as her partner. White Orchids provides close study of the idiosyncrasies of two very different characters and their struggle to see eye to eye. Something in the Air is a mystery in New Zealand seen through the eyes of Rose and in Teheran Diary Denise describes the adventures and struggles of a young girl who becomes the involuntary guest of an Iranian family. The seven authors are an eclectic bunch, hailing as they do from France, Sweden, Hong Kong, California, India, Scotland and Sri Lanka. They all married into and/or worked in cultures other than their own. The collection shares the energy and vitality of these women. In some cases, the pieces describe or narrate too much, rather than SHOW the evolution of the characters, in the fictional sense. In others, the pace is a bit slow. But, by and large, this is a collection in which women like us take a risk and create. And in which we will find ourselves. By Joan McQueeney Mitric