Island Years

In 1973, Mark Odegard and his first wife moved to northern Minnesota to caretake a remote island lodge near the Canadian border. Three years later, they joined the Peace Corps and left for the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific, where both discovered their life's work, and a turn of events that would pull them apart. Happening upon the Fiji Museum on a random walk through the city of Suva, Mark soon found himself its art director, researching and designing exhibits on Fijian culture. His journey eventually led back to Minnesota, where fortune again brought him to a museum waiting for someone with his skills to step inside the door. As told by the author, the day-to-day pleasures and setbacks of a Peace Corps volunteer, circa 1976, are interspersed with a series of unexpected adventures that would shape the rest of his life.