Marching Powder - A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail

A Dead Bat In Paraguay is a true adventure story about a 28-year-old man who decided that the best way he could deal with his existential crisis was to sell his possessions, quit his professional career as a scientist, and hop on a one-way flight to Quito, Ecuador in order to visit every country in South America.

He sincerely believed the trip would put him on a track towards a more fulfilling life of excitement, intrigue, and exotic women, away from his soulless corporate job in a Washington D.C. suburb. Instead, he humorously falls from one country to the next, striking out repeatedly with the local women, getting robbed, having dreams that became reality, self-diagnosing himself with a host of diseases, and suffering repeated bouts of stomach illness that made marathon bus rides superhuman feats of bodily strength. Along the journey he chronicles the friendships, the women, and the struggles, including one fateful night in Paraguay that he thought would lead to his end.

(This book is intended for men, and will be almost universally disliked by women because of its sexist themes and occasional toilet humor.)

After hard luck and heartbreak, Sunny finally finds a place to call home—in the middle of an Afghanistan war zone. There, the thirty-eight-year-old serves up her American hospitality to the expats who patronize her coffee shop, including a British journalist, a “danger pay” consultant, and a wealthy and well-connected woman. True to her name, Sunny also bonds with people whose language and landscape are unfamiliar to most Westerners, but whose hearts and souls are very much like our own: the maternal Halajan, who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and now must hide a modern romance from her ultratraditional son; and Yazmina, a young Afghan villager with a secret that could put everyone’s life in jeopardy. In this gorgeous first novel, New York Times bestselling author Deborah Rodriguez paints a stirring portrait of a faraway place where—even in the fog of political and social conflict—friendship, passion, and hope still exist. 
 
Originally published as A Cup of Friendship
 
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