Welcome

My name is Chris, and I’m the author of the book The Tin Can Crucible. It is the story of a group of subsistence farmers in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea who experience the death of a revered elder. Subsumed by loss and grief, they attack a neighboring village and kidnap two women, accusing them of the murder of the elder through sorcery. It is a story of tradition, culture, belief, and fear.

I know about what happened in that village, because I was there. In 1994, I traveled to Papua New Guinea as a Peace Corps Volunteer. What unfolded before me were the struggles of an indigenous people in a remote land to find their place in the encroaching outside world. The Tin Can Crucible is also a contemplative reflection, a universal story of a young man coming to terms with the balance between the idealism of youth and the pragmatism of experience.