This gripping, intertwined tale is an IndieNext pick! In 1899 Jeremy, a young engineer, leaves a small town in Maine to oversee the construction of a railroad across East Africa. In charge of hundreds of Indian laborers, he soon finds himself the reluctant hunter of two lions that are killing his men in almost nightly attacks on their camp. Plagued by fear, wracked with malaria and alienated by a secret he can tell no one, he takes increasing solace in the company of the African who helps him hunt. In 2000 Max, an American ethnobotonist, travels to Rwanda in search of an obscure vine that could become a lifesaving pharmaceutical. Stationed in the mountains, she closely shadows a family of gorillas, the last of their group to survive the encroachment of local poachers. Max bears a striking gift for understanding the ape's non-verbal communication, but their precarious solidarity is threatened as a violent rebel group from the nearby Congo draws close.
Born a long time ago in another country, Audrey Schulman has traveled enough to have vomited on four continents, including once onto a Masai tribesman’s feet. He, unfortunately, was barefoot. Audrey’s previous novels include The Cage, Swimming with Jonah, and A House Named Brazil, and have been translated into 11 languages, reviewed by the New Yorker and twice selected as notable books by the American Library Association. Audrey’s writing has been published in Orion, Grist, Ms. Magazine, and Bust, among others, as well as widely anthologized. She now lives near Boston with her family and runs an energy-efficiency nonprofit called HEET.
