The most we can say after two years in the Peace Corps is, ‘I did it.’ I taught teachers how to teach reading and learned more from them than they did from me. I lived with a Filipino family, eating their food and speaking their language. I embraced the culture and loved the people. If I faithfully did more than that, then I am blessed.

From Peace Corps with Love recalls the author's experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines from 1970-1972, using letters she exchanged mostly with her family and a few of her friends. In her letters, Patberg relates incidents that characterize her daily life as a Peace Corps Volunteer - e.g.,eating a fried cockroach in order to avoid shaming her Filipino mother, witnessing first-hand her mother's death, waiting in desperation for bras to arrive from home, and falling in love. She writes about the despair of thinking that she wasn't doing enough for the country and the joy of concluding that her success and happiness derived from helping individuals, sometimes one person at a time. She describes her endurance of the loneliness and her inability to adjust to the incapacitating heat, only to realize at the end of her stay that she had adjusted more than she ever thought she could!

Further adventure awaited the author in her post-Peace Corps travels around Southeast Asia, including Nepal where she almost made it to the base camp at Mt. Everest. Throughout her book, she shares with her readers insights and thoughts about Peace Corps, relationships, and the fascinating world in which we live.