Apprentice House Press
June 16, 2026
It’s 1978, and twenty-four-year-old Linda Gambill is stuck in a dead-end job, a nightly marijuana habit, and a troubled relationship with a former professor. Desperate to explore the world and find her place in it, she makes good on a long-held dream. She joins the Peace Corps.
A year later, she arrives in Medina, a devout Muslim village in The Gambia, West Africa. She’s tasked with teaching health and nutrition to the village women, but they have no confidence in a young white woman trying to change their ways. Instead of finding a sense of belonging, Linda becomes so depressed she can barely leave her hut.
When tragedy strikes, her perspective shifts from self-absorption to service. She learns the local language, forges friendships, and begins to make her mark on the village, all the while falling in love with two very different men. But it is only when a coup breaks out that the course of her life becomes clear. Richly sensual and poignant, The Geography of Desire is the story of one woman’s transformative journey amidst the challenges and beauty of West Africa, showing how the people we set out to change, in the end, change us.
The Geography of Desire
A Memoir of West Africa
Praise for
The Geography of Desire
“Gambill’s writing style is often poetic—the memoir reads like a novel, replete with sparky dialogue, inner monologues, and a narrative unafraid to embrace the complexities and erotic moments of romantic relationships. This material is balanced with scholarly research on the Gambia that provides readers with cultural and historical context."
“Gambill’s prose is by turns lyrical and wise, marked by a photographer’s eye for the “lemon-colored” morning light and the “emerald blur” of the bush. For those of us who appreciate a memoir that treats the past with professional care and deep emotional intelligence, The Geography of Desire is a haunting reminder that our early journeys never truly end; they simply wait for a steady wind to bring their scent back to us.”
“A slow-burning page turner, The Geography of Desire has haunted me since I put it down. With an intimate, sometimes poetic style, Linda Gambill takes the reader on her inner and outer journey in The Gambia, a corner of West Africa I knew little about but which has captured a piece of my heart.”
—Eleanor Cooper, author of Dragonfly Dreams and Grace in China
“Linda Gambill’s The Geography of Desire: A Memoir of West Africa takes readers on an adventure of self-discovery and her quest for belonging while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia. I found myself rooting for her as she struggles with unresolved grief while trying to adapt to village life, to figure out how to make a sustainable difference, and to navigate her love for two men. This powerful and provocative memoir left me longing to embark on another overseas adventure of my own. What a ride!”
——Anna Keibler, author of Firecrackers
“On this profoundly personal journey from her stifling life in East Tennessee to a devout Muslim village in The Gambia, West Africa, Gambill discovers that she is vastly underprepared for the harsh realities of life in the bush. This powerful story about the search for meaning and the desire to matter brings her face-to-face with her own deep-seated flaws and surprising resilience,leading her to at last lay claim to her truest self. Gambill’s writing is by turns lyrical, self-reflective, and wise; it is a treat to go on this journey with her.”
—Dana Shavin, author of The Body Tourist and Finding the World
“This is an entertaining story of one woman’s two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small village in rural Gambia (West Africa) during a period of heightened political turmoil. Gambill doesn’t shy away from personal and psychological issues, writing honestly of the trials of acculturation and relationships between men and women across cultures. She makes the point that following one’s desires can, indeed, lead to personal fulfillment.”
—Donald W. Wright, Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, Emeritus, SUNY-Cortland
The Old Slave Fort
By Linda Gambill
“The Old Slave Fort” is an excerpt from The Geography of Desire
Forthcoming to Allium, A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Colombia College, Chicago
Peeling Onions in Africa
By Linda Gambill
“Peeling Onions in Africa” was published in the Winter 2025 issue of Persimmon Tree
The Peace Corps had warned me: as a volunteer serving in the African bush, I would have to endure extreme heat, crippling loneliness, and an excruciatingly slow pace. Every now and then, I was told, some poor volunteer in some isolated pocket of the world would show up for work in their village stark naked. The bush was a lonely place. I might suffer a breakdown. It could happen to anyone, and the Peace Corps couldn’t predict to whom.
I was undaunted. At twenty-five, I’d been dreaming of joining the Peace Corps for over half my life, and as an activity therapist at a psychiatric hospital—i.e., someone who knew a thing or two about mental illness—I was 99.9 percent confident that I was 99.9 percent stable.
A Girl from Pakau
By Linda Gambill
“A Girl from Pakau” was published in the Fall 2022 edition of Parhelion Literary
As I ironed my bra, sweat dripped from my nose and splotched the lace. I set the iron down on the coals to heat it back up and wiped my head with a rag. I hardly ever ironed my clothes in Tennessee, much less my underwear. But in West Africa, where I was working as a health educator, creatures called toombo flies laid their eggs in laundry drying outdoors.
If you put on an infested garment, the eggs would slither down your hair follicles and burrow into your skin, feeding off your blood until they hatched right out of your flesh. The only way to avoid all this unpleasantness was to iron every square inch of your clothes, frying the little suckers before they could turn you into their personal incubator.
