Off the Beaten Path: Stories of People Around the World

“Our experience through Off the Beaten Path: Stories of People Around the World by Ruth Colvin is both humbling and enlightening. We see, through the illumination of cultural differences, human similarities. We feel, in a word, connected.”

In her inspiring work, Off the Beaten Path: Stories of People Around the World, Ruth Colvin shares the magic of her extraordinary life of travel and service.

She and her husband of 70 years have journeyed to 62 countries and provided literacy training in 26 developing nations. During their travels they have befriended people from across the spectrum of human experience.

Through Ms. Colvin, we meet lepers in India and Madagascar, a revolutionary in the apartheid system of South Africa, and a whole host of others from Cambodia, China, Nigeria, Zambia, Swaziland, Ecuador, and Peru.

Off the Beaten Path is written in a cozy, conversational tone making you feel as if you have been invited to a fireside chat in Ruth’s living room. She does more than simply entertain; she motivates the reader, asking the question: How can an individual become an “instrument of peace”?

Ms. Colvin suggests that one reason people can’t live peacefully together is because they know so little of each other’s histories, cultures, traditions, and religions. Her book sets out to relieve us of our ignorance. She goes far “off the beaten path” and embraces people most of us will never have the opportunity to meet.

Our experience through Off the Beaten Path: Stories of People Around the World by Ruth Colvin is both humbling and enlightening. We see, through the illumination of cultural differences, human similarities. We feel, in a word, connected.

This is a book that stays with you. After reading it, you will look at people of different backgrounds in your own city with a more understanding eye. Maybe you will even book a trip. . . .