Tess Johnston's peripatetic half a century has taken her through fourteen Foreign Service postings to her retirement – and this book, written in her permanently temporary home in Shanghai. She loves to talk, and to write and the range of her interests is broad, as the chapters below reveal. Tess has filled them with life, with anecdotes and with humor. Travel with her in her "little life" in a wider world.

Berlin – First Posting
Düsseldorf – Voluntary Exile
Charlottesville – Back Home
Williamsburg – New Job
Vietnam – New Adventures
Bien Hoa – The Tet Offensive
Can Tho – Vann Moves South
Laos – A Sudden Transfer
Vietnam II – A Consulate in Can Tho
Washington – Career Decisions
Frankfurt am Main – In the Foreign Service…again
Berlin – Back to my Old Haunts
New Delhi – A Tough Assignment
Tehran – An Unfriendly City
Washington – Learning an Impossible Language
Shanghai – My First Look at China
Paris – A Thorn among Roses
Shanghai II – The Last Great Adventure
Retirement – or Shanghai III
A Happy Ending?

PLUS EIGHT ARTICLES:
A Hundred Years of Shanghai's Expat History
– The Foreigners Come and Go
Eritrea – A Country Awaiting Discovery – and Recovery
Berlin's Bendler Block
– The Ghost of Graf von Stauffenberg
Crickets – China's Most Entrancing Hobby
Havana – Incredible Architecture…Crumbling
Schlesien (Silesia) – A Disappearing German Heritage
Vietnam – Thirty Years Later
Dogs – Farewell to my Four-Footed Friend