Woman in the Mists [Paperback]

Farley Mowat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1988

Deep in the volcano country of central Africa live some of the rarest, most intriguing animals on earth -- the mountain gorillas. Here, in the mist-shrouded forests, Dian Fossey courageously dedicated her life to studying them. Here she patiently waited until the luminous-eyed gorillas accepted her presence, hugged her, and loved her...while she fought for their survival against poachers, callous researchers, zoo collectors, and local bureaucrats. And here, surrounded by these enemies, she died, mysteriously and brutally murdered.

Now, one of the world's most respected naturalist writers draws for the first time ever on Dian Fossey's personal writings to reveal the true story of a magnificent obsession...one woman's enormous empathy for a highly intelligent, desperately endangered animal -- and how it ruled her life, her work, and her heart.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mowat, author of Never Cry Wolf and Sea of Slaughter, had access to Fossey's private papers; he has used excerpts from her diaries, amplifying the material with interviews from people who knew her wellfriends, enemies, colleagues, lovers. It is a gripping story from beginning to gruesome end, filled with drama, intrigue and love affairs. Fossey was an attractive, intelligent, determined woman; she was duped by some of the men in her life and, in the end, victim of ugly rumors and lies. Mowat redresses the record and offers a new theory about her murder in Africa in 1985. He believes that the two-year extension of her visa was Fossey's death warrant, that she had become a threat to Rwandans who wanted to exploit parkland for tourismnot a poacher, but a hired assassin killed Fossey. Her mercurial personality alone gives the book a wider audience than most in the nature-adventure genreand it is fitting that such a passionate defender of wildlife as Mowat write about her. Illustrations.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The murder of Dian Fossey at her research camp in Rwanda focused world attention on her 19 years of struggle to study and preserve the mountain gorilla. Mowat ( Never Cry Wolf ) has, as intended, organized Fossey's journals into a biography that quotes her writings so heavily as to be autobiographical. Much of the text parallels material in Fossey's Gorillas in the Mist ( LJ 5/15/83) but provides additional insights into her personal life, difficulties in maintaining funding, and the continuation of her work up to her death in 1985. This gripping, action-packed story is essential reading for all who understand the sacrifice of self for the preservation of other species. Highly recommended. Frank Reiser, Nassau Community Coll., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (November 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446387207
• ISBN-13: 978-0446387200
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #830,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A sympathetic portrait of a complicated woman October 12, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Another engrossing and fascinating Mowat title, another Mowat "must read", "Woman in the Mists" is the sympathetic biography of a woman whose work gave us a window into the world of the mountain gorilla, a species to whose protection and conservation she was devoted. By alternating excerpts from her diary entries and personal letters with his own descriptive text, Mowat brings Dian Fossey, a powerfully willed and often abrasive woman, to life. Her youthful years, young adulthood, her fateful meeting with Louis Leakey, her romantic involvements and disappointments, her first contacts with the gorillas and the years of her work and struggle are portrayed with humanity and affection. The tale is enormously enriched by her own words. She struggled indomitably against self-serving African bureaucrats, indigenous herdsmen and hunter-gatherers, antagonistic forces that gained strength against her in the fields of primatology and philanthropy, and her own gradually deteriorating health largely the result of a powerful smoking addiction.

But her work and her happiness were plagued by male academics and agents of philanthropic organizations who got caught up in a web of calumny and distrust motivated by primatologists who were seriously bent out of shape by her abrasiveness and who felt they could avenge themselves by vilifying her, possibly abetted by society's undercurrent of misogyny. Had there been no vilification, she may never have been killed, as her fatal enemy, probably an African, no doubt took strength from knowing how much she was hated by, for example, the American and European agents of the Mountain Gorilla Project. Mowat provides the reader a chilling view of Fossey's victimization, but never identifies the sexist element which seems apparent to this male reviewer.

Fossey survived all the victimization because of her extraordinary strength and a powerfully motivating love for the gorillas and the entire eden-like natural world in which she lived. She had serious blind spots: her obliviousness to her abrasiveness, her hatred for the National Park's Tutsi herders and pygmy hunter-gatherers, even before the latter began killing her beloved gorillas (whole gorilla family groups, in order to capture a single infant for the zoo trade and skulls for the tourist souvenir trade), and her (and Mowat's) use of the racist epithet "wog" with impunity toward Africans who she hated, though she shared genuine bonds of love with the Africans who worked with her as trackers and poaching patrollers, and evidenced no other racist feeling. Mowat's record of Fossey's life is a powerful, shocking, revealing and loving account.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "A woman who gave herself completely to those she loved." January 23, 2005

By Mary Whipple HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

When it came to dealing with people, Dian Fossey was sometimes her own worst enemy, but her dedication to saving the African mountain gorilla and its habitat in Rwanda is indisputable. Describing himself as an "editorial collaborator," rather than as a biographer, Farley Mowat assembles Fossey's story from her never-before-printed journals and private papers, inserting them directly into the book in boldface so she can tell her own story. From her founding of the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda in 1967, until her murder there in December, 1985, Fossey battled to save "those she loved" from poaching, abduction, and dismemberment.

Throughout her eighteen years at Karisoke, Fossey studied organized groups of gorillas to whom she became so familiar that they would even touch her. As fierce and protective of her own "turf" as a silverback, however, she refused to bend to the exigencies of the political climate and funding requirements and made innumerable enemies. When local herdsmen exerted their age-old rights to graze cattle on "her" mountain, Fossey shot the cattle. When poachers hurt her gorillas, she pursued them, even kidnapping the four-year-old son of one of them to force his surrender. When students at her own Center disagreed with her, she could be brutal.

Fossey also fought local officials, park guards, and conservators who took bribes and staged events in order to protect their payoffs. She battled conservation organizations which wanted to get her funds, rival researchers who wanted to take over her project, and governmental officials who saw tourism in the park as a source of wealth and graft. Always fighting with ferocity, she made no effort to see another point of view or compromise. Her unsolved murder in 1985, by someone who knew the layout of her cabin, could have been by someone from any of these alienated groups.

Mowat presents Fossey as a lonely warrior who never found personal peace, a woman who was instrumental in drawing pubic attention to the plight of the mountain gorilla but who was less sucessful than she had hoped. As he points out in his Epilogue, her cause has been continued by some of the researchers who studied with her. Two of those, Amy Vedder and Bill Weber, continue the story of the gorillas from the death of Fossey through 1993's disastrous Rwandan Civil War. Their book, In the Kingdom of Gorillas: Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land, reflects a more conciliatory viewpoint than that of Fossey. Mary Whipple

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This book protrayed Dian Fossey as a human being. October 21, 1998

By [e-mail]

Format:Paperback

I liked Woman in the Mists very much. Mowat does a great job of protraying Fossey as a human, rather then a scientific researcher who was murdered. I would recomend this book to anyone who wants to read about a strong willed individual who refuses to back down under any and all hard conditions