Set in Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, a sweeping historical novel features four characters--a fervent missionary, his young wife, a British officer, and an African tribal chief--whose beliefs and passions are tested by history.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The suppression by the British of a tribal rebellion in 1896 Rhodesia forms the subject of this robust, uncompromisingly realistic new novel (after A Marriage of Convenience, etc.) from Jeal, biographer of African adventurers David Livingstone and Robert Baden-Powell. Robert Haslam, indefatigable nonconformist missionary, whisks his naive young bride, Clara Musson, from England to the African bush, where he aims to convert Chief Mponda and his tribe to Christianity. High-spirited Clara, however, oscillating between awe of her husband and repulsion at his fanatical zeal, is dismayed by a continent festering with disease, witchcraft, female circumcision, wife-beating and atrocities inflicted by black and white alike. Her disillusionment turns to fear when Mponda's murderous son, Makufa, determined to save his father from the disgrace of baptism, hatches a rebellion. Clara gains the protection, and then love, of a quixotic British captain, Francis Vaughan, who futilely tries to enlist Haslam in a plan to snuff out the simmering revolt. In the novel's violent conclusion, British troops armed with Maxim guns crush the uprising, slaughtering spear-carrying warriors who view Christian missionaries as front-men for relentless colonial exploitation. The light Jeal shines is harsh, but it brightly illumines the forces?both foreign and indigenous?that have warped Africa's socioeconomic development.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Clara Musson, the only daughter of a wealthy British widower, falls in love with charismatic missionary Robert Haslam. Despite her father's frantic fears for her safety, she travels to southern Africa with her new husband to support his efforts to convert to Christianity the powerful chief Mponda of the Venda tribe. There she finds a beautiful, harsh world of pride and long-held custom that is being split down the middle by the increasing British and German oppression of the African tribes until finally they rise up against the white settlers, miners, and soldiers. Jeal's setting is vivid and the passions of his characters deeply felt, but the rapidly shifting points of view, often between three or more voices in a page, result in a choppy and ultimately uninvolving narrative. Still, Jeal has chosen the landscape he knows well: the dramatic canvas of Africa at the turn of the century. Historical fiction buffs will be appreciative. Roberta Johnson
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