The Missionary Position

True adventure with photographic journal and original cartoons giving a visual chronology of the colorful, criminal, and outrageous characters and perils in this American couple's often humorous, often dramatic four years in the newly opened, bawdy, crime-ridden seaport of post-Soviet Vladivostok, Russia. The escapades are further complicated by trying to raise seven children, the eighth due any day.

Followed by the KGB, robbed blind (34 times), forging visas, wrangling with mafiosos, thugs, thieves, fools and roads, strip-searched in public, having one's ass bit off by a St. Bernard, a near-scandalous affair (well, there are some perks), flailing through the 1998 financial melt-down, jumping tramp steamers and the Trans Siberian Express, toasting one (or nine) too many vodkas, commandeering a Russian Navy tall ship, helplessly watching a man break through the ice and drown, becoming TV celebrities, shivering through an unheated winter, and having our eighth baby born in an untamed land. This is the true account of the colorful, criminal, and outrageous adventures of an American couple's four years in Russia. The often humorous, often dramatic characters and perils further complicate the escapades while the couple tries to survive and raise seven children, the eighth on the way, in the newly opened, bawdy, crime-ridden seaport of post-soviet Vladivostok. Arranged chronologically, The Missionary Position jumps in at a major burglary and capture of thieves, through the first adjusting months, a bitter Russian winter, and a hectic summer. Highlighted with anecdotes of oddball acquaintances, petty criminals, and daily Soviet life, and peppered with brief historical notes, the book thrashes through the 1998 financial crash and finally finishes with struggling through one last Siberian winter. The terms missionary and humor are seldom teamed up, giving The Missionary Position a unique place in literature – nowhere near the Kama Sutra, but equally far from Joseph Smith's Golden Tablets. Neither religious nor secular, the book rather focuses on the cultural and human interest of modern Russia, the escapades, mistakes, charming eccentricities and oddball criminals. As such The Missionary Position presents a seldom-seen picaresque combination of missionary and mercenary, drama and comedy, in the Russian Far East.

Tad Browne spent his first 20 years in Tacoma, Washington, and his next 30 intensely engaged in independent Christian and humanitarian work throughout Central and South America (not quite avoiding the occasional revolution), Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and finally Russia. Independent here means he had to pay his own way and often scramble and scrounge to keep the work afloat. These skills proved particularly useful to survive in post-Soviet Russia. He returned to the US in 1999, enjoys languages, exploring exotic places, rowing, fencing epee (you never know when someone may need to be skewered), guitar, books, friends, children and grandchildren.