Why Belize?

From Kirkus Reviews: "e;Eileen Sologoski flees her old life in Michigan for a new life in Belize, though the weather-beaten seaside capital city is notprecisely as she imagined it would be. The 47-year-old woman left behind a husband, two nearly grown children, and ateaching job in the middle of the school year, arriving in the country with little money and no employment prospects. Sherents a room for 50 dollars a month in the home of a Belizean man named Eduardo and his German wife, Kita. Like Eileen,Kita is fleeing a troubled past, one she would prefer not to discuss. "e;You are here now,"e; she advises Eileen. "e;Make a newlife for yourself."e; Eileen finds a job as a tour guide leading busloads of day-trippers to see the local Mayan ruins. She evendevises a new name for herself: Lennie Solo. Lennie manages not to think too much about the life she left behind herhusband James, her twin boys just starting college when James' parents arrive in Belize City on a cruise ship. Confronted with the judgmental presence of Edgar and Wilma Sologoski, Lennie is forced to consider the decisions thatbrought her to Belize and what decisions might send her back home again. Nelsestuen has a musical sense of language,his sentences capturing the rhythms of both the landscape and the people who move through it... the narrative manages todepict midlife crisis in all its messy self-involvement."e;