Tales of Turkmenistan and Greek Legends

The travel section in Sunday's Washington Post (July 16) profiled the book Unknown Sands by John W. Kropf, who is a resident of Fauquier County.

Subtitled "Journeys around the world's most isolated country", it recounts his experiences in remote Turkmenistan.

Listed as a "hardship post", Mr. Kropf spent two years on a diplomatic mission there, traveling throughout the land which Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, Genghis Khan and few intrepid Western adventurers had passed.

Geographically, Turkmenistan is bordered on the south by Iran and Afghanistan, and to the north by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and opens onto the Caspian Sea to the west. In the center of the country is the Kara Kum Desert, which covers 80% of the country.
It has been a route of the Silk Road, and part of the former Soviet Union.

A copy of his book is available at the Fauquier Library.
For more information:
Unknown Sands

Another local author, John Latka, has recently published a novel,
Staten Island Memoirs, a fantasy tale of lost love involving an elderly man named Paris Polanski, remembering a chance encounter 43 years earlier, with a beautiful woman he calls Helen after "Helen of Troy." Zeus intervenes to arrange a meeting.

Mr. Latka was born in Brooklyn, but currently resides in Warrenton.

Staten Island Memoirs