About
Dr. Dan Lutz served in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan and Iran, and served as teacher, program director, and principal in Denver Public Schools. He has designed and founded five international studies programs and schools for DPS, and consulted with international studies schools nationally. Dan heads Lutz GLOBE, an education consultant organization focusing on global competency for graduation, exposing invalid education assumptions, and redefining “school” in terms of authentic learning context.
Featured Work
The Pendant
Rafiq is born into the violent forces of the 1979 USSR invasion of Afghanistan and the mujahedin resistance. Each of his parents, Jamilah and Khalil, grow up in neighboring poor villages in eastern Afghanistan. Thirteen-year-old Jamilah is given a keychain from her Peace Corps teacher Mrs. Neal, who had cherished the entwined circles on its pendant as a symbol of connection among all people, no matter what appears to divide them. The keychain appears throughout this book as a reflection of connection beyond loss. From an arranged marriage and birth of a son in the midst of a terrorizing war, Jamilah flees Afghanistan with her child.
Unfolding with Jamilah's story, AnaMarie and George’s staggered path brings them together through their own West Denver challenges, tragedies, and yearnings to have a family. An unexpressed empty place hides within each of them.
The two threads of the novel shape the circumstances of struggle for an adopted child seeking to find a sense of identity.
