Rutledge Jordan is looking for redemption. A Peace Corps worker finishing up a monastic two-year stint in Tanzania, he teaches villagers how to build fish ponds. He is a long way from his previous life in Memphis, Tennessee - a life of legal briefs and expositions, sweaty infidelities, and a wrecked engagement. In the lush Usambara Mountains, Jordan hopes to start over. Despite his labors, the sins of his past revisit him in the form of a beautiful young school girl named Zanifa. Promised to a wealthy, Oxford-educated African prince, she awaits her marriage and forced ritual mutilation with a mixture of hope and resignation. But Jordan becomes outraged, refusing to accept the girl's fate. And as his initial attraction to Zanifa grows into an obsession, he decides her only salvation lies in her seduction... Now the cycle of passion and vengeance is set in motion and the prince will demand his own cruel revenge. In a desperate and determined final gesture of love, Jordan takes a risk at once noble, foolhardy, and terrifying. And in a shocking conclusion, the price of love and justice will be levied and paid.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Impressive action scenes begin and end this debut novel by magazine journalist Coleman. Between them are brief, haunting descriptions of the incursions of pop culture on the rural life of Tanzania, but there's a heavy equatorial stillness at the heart of the story. Rutledge Jordan is a Peace Corps volunteer five months away from the end of his contract, teaching Usambara Mountain dwellers to farm fish. In his free time, he rescues a runt eaglet and trains it, and he obsesses about his failure to marry the woman back home and to settle into life as a member of a prestigious law firm in Memphis. When he meets Zanifa, a 16-year-old innocent engaged to the sinister local sultan and scheduled to undergo ritual circumcision before the ceremony, his lust for her and his scorn for the sultan provoke Jordan to make a grand, if self-serving, effort to save Zanifa from mutilation. A few Graham Greene-like characters hover at the edge of the narrative, but neither they nor Coleman's themes (the unworldly but uninnocent American in Africa, the coming of democracy to Tanzania) achieve three-dimensionality. Coleman ends up with an engaging travelogue but a formulaic story. (Mar.) FYI: Coleman lived for two years in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Coleman's first novel is about the heavy cost of carrying one's own problems and culturally conditioned views into encounters with an alien people. Lawyer Rutledge Jordan loses his fiancee because of his incessant womanizing. To escape his sense of loss, he joins the Peace Corps and is assigned to Tanzania, where he helps natives build fish ponds. There, he meets an attractive young half-breed, Zanifa, soon to be married to a native sultan. Before the marriage, she will be circumcised in a barbaric and painful ritual. Rutledge sets out to persuade Zanifa to refuse to participate. Persuasion turns to seduction, described in intensely erotic prose. A friend warns, "It's not your country. You can't alter their behavior." The sultan threatens vengeance. But events have gone too far. The quality and empathetic breadth of writing make this an accomplished novel, satisfying to the most discriminating reader.
-?David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-?David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
not what I was expecting...,
By Brian (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Volunteer (Hardcover)
as someone who has been in the peace core, I just couldn't relate to this. I found it trite and poorly written. I don't recommend it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Having been to Tanzania and the villages described - Superb!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Volunteer (Hardcover)
I am probably biased, as I have worked in Tanzania and I adore the mountain region around Lushoto where the story takes place. The description of the scenery, the people and the places are fantastic. The story that takes place is full of excitement and intrigue. It is certainly something that is in the realm of possibilities for a Peace Corps volunteer. It is a novel and fiction, but it brought back great memories of the place and was a great story to read on vacation.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Absorbing, exciting dramatic first book,
By jlgrant@earthlink.net or Judy Grant (Orange County, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Volunteer (Hardcover)
Having just returned from a brief stay in Tanzania on a volunteer vacation project, I was very anxious to read this book. I think it is excellent for a first book. The story is compelling, the plot and action keep at a pretty good pace, and the characters are colorful and interesting. The author's descriptions of the land and people are straightforward, even gritty, and with the use of Kiswahili phrases throughout, he gives it a very authenthic feel. He certainly does not glamorize Peace Corps work. Jordan's character is an odd mix of altruism (no one in his right mind would sign up for two years to work in a rural Third world country village on a lark) and selfish immaturity. The flashbacks to his failed relationship with his girlfriend in the US (of which I wish there had been less)indicate the latter. His efforts to save and raise a baby Eagle and make life better for a young Tanzanian girl are well intended but again, his motives are far from pure, especially when it comes to the girl. He makes some pretty foolhardy decisions towards the end of the book in his effort to get the girl out of harm's way which make for pretty compelling and dramatic adventures. The ending is pretty gruesome - I could have done without it, but there it was! I kept wondering how much of this book was autobiographical by the author, as he lived and worked in the Usumbara Mountains and started the Tanzania Wildlife Fund referred to in the last chapter. All in all, if you like Africa, different cultures and adventure, I think would you would enjoy this book. I will look forward to another book by Carter Coleman.
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