Walking the Tideline Review from Spirit & Life

” Catalyst Press is an independent publishing company founded in 2017 with the aim of bringing diverse voices from around the world to a wider audience. It focuses on Africa and includes fiction, memoirs, travel, science, and books for young readers. This is the first of their publications that I have read and I loved it. This is a beautifully written, poetic memoir.

Caroline Kurtz, an author based in Portland, Oregon, spent most of her childhood and teenage years in Ethiopia, where her parents worked for the Presbyterian Church, helping to establish a school, a clinic, and a small church. Caroline attended a boarding school in Addis Ababa, where she met her future husband.

Caroline’s marriage was rocky but loving. When she lost her husband to cancer, she was overwhelmed by grief. To find her identity without him, she made a solo hike along the rugged Oregon coast. She was in her sixties, and the hike was difficult. She had never backpacked before. Carrying shelter and food, she describes water, sand, rocks, forests, and a variety of characters whom she met along the way. She intertwines memories of her past life with historical events and her current experience. The hike enabled her to shed her old identity and find a new one.

Caroline Kurtz is the founder and Executive Director of Maji Development Coalition, which was registered as a nonprofit corporation in 2018. Its purpose is to raise money for women’s development, solar energy provision, and access to potable water in the Maji District of Ethiopia.”