A memoir inspired by people around him who didn’t expect of his past and the life he had but were thrilled to get to know that part of him, Suspended in Vast Plain is author Stan Kasprzyk’s tribute to that life in between the past and the present. The events portrayed in the memoir split his life into two parts, and almost equal in duration.
Who is he going to be? Where in the world will he settle down? The journey into his future covers two years, from 1983 to 1985, as a young man who escapes native Poland in political turmoil and economic disaster in the heat of the Cold War to become a lecturer at FUTY, a fledgling university in Yola, a remote town in Nigeria. Vivid images of West Africa, the hardships of life in the “white man’s graveyard”, dealings within a small international faculty and with the “nomads” from Poland and countries of the West are the backdrop for the story. Obstacles pile up: bringing family from Poland; the military coup in Nigeria; bloody Islamist riots in town; possible shutdown of FUTY; the near-death of a friend. Anxiety and doldrums linger. Finally, the idea of “the second leap” gets a chance to come of age. However, its implementation is not without hurdles, and the departure from Yola is not without adventures.
Before leaving Poland to a new life in North America, he had a break — of 2 years — living a different life from what he was used to and what his life would become; but a significant intermission nonetheless.
This book is available online and can be purchased at online bookstores: Writers Republic, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
About the Author
Stan Kasprzyk was born in Poland, then separated from most of Europe and the world by the Iron Curtain. He had a peaceful childhood in a middle-class family. He enjoyed his schools and teachers and completed his education by reading economics. Then, he was a lecturer and researcher, married and had a stepdaughter. In the second part of his life, he worked as a software engineer on many exciting projects in Canada and USA. He had a daughter, later two grandchildren, and retired. His hobbies include travel, photography, and gardening when he cannot travel. He also has a pair of cats, as he had in Vast Plain, suspended, some thirty-five years ago.