From the Introduction by Dr. Eric Anderson:

A good autobiography has a strange effect on a reader, at least this one. As I read Adugnaw Worku’s riveting life story, I found that I was putting myself in his shoes. After a few chapters, I was imagining that I had lived his odyssey and shared in his struggle for an education. That’s the impact of a successful writer. As I reflected on his choice to both honor and defy his parents, to love his homeland and to adopt a new citizenship, I thought I understood. 

To a reader just picking up this book, allow me to adopt Adu’s persona and speak in his voice:

“A reader of my story begins with certain handicaps,” I might say in his voice, putting my words in his mouth. “But those handicaps can disappear. You are entering an alien world in which road signs have been removed or changed, a world in which assumptions and proverbs are not the same as the wisdom that is taken for granted by present-day Americans or Europeans. Words like ‘peasant’ or ‘patriarchy’ or even ‘tradition’ may, for you, my readers, obscure as much as they reveal.

“Even my Ethiopian-American sons have a hard time understanding, I suspect, a time and place where abduction and love could overlap, where sex is unavoidably rooted in procreation, where male and female are simply defined by nature, and where old age brings authority.

“Please don’t jump to conclusions,” I can hear Adu saying. “People who do so are certain to miss subtleties or paradoxes. You may never have met an illiterate wise man or known a woman, hedged about by strict limitations, who nonetheless exercises real power. You might scoff at a society that, without irony, speaks of ‘manly courage’ or somehow respects both an all-encompassing, demanding tradition and the stubborn individual who goes his or her own way. 

“Reader, you may be appalled by the plagues and deprivation of the community I was born into. But do not make the mistake of concluding that human life was less valued in such circumstances, that my people were degraded by their poverty and isolation.

“I understand your confusion and sometimes almost share it. At the end of a long and eventful life, I am glad to have traveled and learned and changed. I relish my new identity as an educated citizen of an innovating and ‘creatively destructive’ democracy. I am happy that I am no longer an unlettered shepherd. But the change in my life was costly and (in the words of the poet), ‘Though much is taken, much abides.’

“I urge you to be open-minded as you consider the interaction of old and new, unfamiliar and known,” he concludes.  

And I agree. I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Acknowledgments
Introduction
My Mother
My Father
A Dangerous Mission
A Giant Leap of Faith
The Most Anticipated Surprise
Born to Be a Shepherd
The Restless Years
Never A Dull Moment
Goodbye Everyone!
Do or Die
The Rest of the Story
The Missionaries
My High School Years
From a Village to a World Stage
Going Down Under
Welcome to America
A Late Bloomer
Home Sweet Home
Back to the Beginning

The Restless Shepherd recounts an inspiring life journey from rural Ethiopia to the widening vistas of multiple graduate degrees and a career as head of a college library in northern California. Now an advocate and philanthropist for his people, especially the women and girls, the author looks back with admiration for the incredible strength of the people and culture of his childhood, with its unbreakable family bonds, loyalty, discipline, purpose, and courage. The Restless Shepherd is a ride worth taking.

—Dr. Nancy Hoyt Lecourt, Professor of English and Academic Vice President Emerita, Pacific Union College

An autobiography so powerful and inspiring at numerous levels, showing that “truth is stranger than fiction” in following the unlikely journey of a 6-year old Ethiopian shepherd who eventually obtains three graduate degrees before becoming the librarian of a highly ranked American liberal arts college. It will be a hard read for people to put down. His impressive wife’s story also shows the importance of tenacity, vision, resilience, and spirituality.

—Richard Osborn, Former President, Pacific Union College; Vice President, WASC Senior College and University Commission

Professor Adugnaw Worku, is an educator, a musician, a poet, an author, and a community leader. He was born in a small village in Gondar, Northwest Ethiopia, where he grew up supporting his peasant parents as a shepherd until an eye accident sent him off to Debretabor, the nearest city, in search of medical care. While there, he observed children and youth attending school. At age 15 and a half, Worku became determined to learn and did.

He graduated from eighth grade at age 22 and high school at the age of 26. He received his bachelor’s degree at age 30 from Avondale College in Australia, two masters degrees in history and education from Andrews University in Michigan, and his third masters in library science from the University of Southern California. In 1993, he became a full professor at Pacific Union College in Northern California.  In 2009 he received an honorary doctorate in human letters from Southwestern Adventist University.

Professor Adugnaw Worku has been giving back to generations of students and to his community. The Worku Jember High School and the vocational training school he established in Ethiopia now educate hundreds of boys and girls, giving them the same transformational gift of education, he received long ago. In addition, Professor Worku has been digging community water wells, installing modern flour mills, and training women and girls on basic health and hygiene, including making reusable feminine pads from local materials.