ABOUT

Lynne E. Chandler was born in Senegal, West Africa and spent her childhood years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the United States. She studied cultural anthropology in university, and spent a summer in the Ituri Forest of Congo near pygmies and a leprosy colony. After marrying and having their first child, a daughter, they moved to the UK and then Tunisia, North Africa, where their son was born. Globe hopping continued until they settled into the Northwestern part of the US; and then 9/11 happened.

Mirroring Jonah of old, reluctantly but eventually succumbing to an inner prompting, Lynne moved with her family to Cairo, Egypt, the arid home of over 20 million people, to serve as the music director in the Anglican/Episcopal international church her husband pastored. Leaving behind her concert harp and quiet fields of nature, she gradually learned the art of embracing a concrete desert. It was even more challenging than its image demands.

Her first book, Embracing a Concrete Desert, tells of her trail of tears through the desert and the celebration of living springs discovered within.

Embracing Dusty Detours, is a book of reflections on inner themes of spirituality, a glimpse into the Middle East through a western woman’s eyes and heart. God’s grace and ever-faithful presence emerges through laughter, tears and raw honesty as an inner story twists its way along dusty detours of the path of life.

Her work of fiction, Mrs. Baul Investigates: Bishop Kidnapped in Egypt, tells a whimsical tale of adventure as the ever paranoid Mrs Baul, wife of the esteemed expatriate priest Rev Baul, weaves her way through the exotic landscape of Egypt in search of a missing bishop with much mishap along the way.

After ten years in Cairo, Lynne and her husband Paul moved back to the US as their children moved into adulthood and new dreams emerged out of the challenging but wonderful years shared together in Egypt. Her children are now married, which has brought along with it the joy of a bonus son and a bonus daughter, and two beautiful grandchildren.