Dirty Wars and Polished Silver ─ The Life and Times of a War Correspondent Turned Ambassatrix

"I'm happy to report that adventure I found, beyond my wildest imaginings. Glamour, too. And love. But there were other things lurking--danger, death, personal loss--that I did not foresee. Most of all, there was war."

Growing up in 1960s Detroit, Lynda Schuster felt convinced that life was happening somewhere else and she was determined to find it.
And find it she did.
DIRTY WARS AND POLISHED SILVER is the story of her life abroad as a foreign correspondent in war-torn countries, and as the wife of a U. S. Ambassador. It chronicles her experiences reporting on uprisings in the jungles of Mexico, dodging rocket fire in Lebanon, being held hostage in the wastelands of Angola, and grieving the loss of her first husband, Los Angeles Times reporter Dial Torgrson, who was killed on assignment at the Honduran-Nicaraguan border.
But even after her second marriage, when she traded in the bombs and bravado of journalism for the supposedly safer life as the wife of U. S. diplomat, all the black-tie parties and personal staff and genteel grooming at "Ambassatrix School" in the world could not protect her from the violence of war.
Told with great good humor, DIRTY WARS AND POLISHED SILVER is the gripping yet charming story of one woman's journey to self-discovery, and about how she ultimately found herself where she least expected to be: in essentially the same place, only wiser, saner, more resolved—and all in one piece.

Lynda Schuster is a former foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor, who has reported from Central and South America, Mexico, the Middle East, and Africa. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Utne Reader, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Times Magazine, among other. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and daughter.