One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1893 Mary Kingsley, then 30, ventured into what is now Gabon, West Africa, "a region notorious for its deadly climate and diseases, its alarming wildlife, and its cannibals." The British wayfarer was enthralled and penned Travels in West Africa . This classic led American doctoral student and pentathlete Alexander to embark on a similar odyssey, retracing Kingsley's steps. Armed with Kingsley's book and maps, her own background research, and a store of determination, the author trekked through bamboo forests and villages of mud huts, encountering incurious natives and serene missionaries. Juxtaposing the colorful details of her days with the writings of a vast cast of explorers from a century before, Alexander weaves a verbal tapestry that tells of her deepening affection for the Gabonese and growing admiration for the exploits of her 19th-century forebear. In superimposing motorboats, hydrofoils and other modernisms upon Kingsley's less "civilized" adventure, Alexander may come up short in her desire to "make contact with the past," but the record of her attempt will fascinate.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Kingsley's Travels in West Africa (1897) still makes wonderfully entertaining reading; she is a hard act to follow. Although travel to Africa has shed its exoticism, it still offers plenty of challenges, and Alexander found her share in equatorial Gabon, retracing the route up the Ogooue River taken by Kingsley nearly 100 years ago. Weaving a narrative pattern of "then and now," Alexander evokes images of chugging river steamers packed with passengers, roads of red dust, pirogues paddled against the current, and more. As she travels in the footsteps of others, she reflects on the different faces of interpretive writing, selective recollection, and the disparity between fact and fiction. But ultimately this is Alexander's own story of discovery and can be read and enjoyed as such. She avoids the patronizing, exaggerated tone of much contemporary travel writing about Africa; she is sympathetic and gently self-effacing. Recommended for libraries developing travel literature collections and for Africana collections.
-Janet L. Stanley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 290 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First edition. edition (January 20, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394574559
• ISBN-13: 978-0394574554
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,370,336 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring Travel Memoir/Biography, April 30, 2007

By	Eileen P. Gardner (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: One Dry Season:In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley (Paperback)

. This lovely travel memoir pays homage to a little-remembered remarkable Victorian woman named Mary Kingsley who explored the wilds of West Africa at the end of the 1900s. Alexander was determined to retrace the steps of the journey made by Kingsley in 1895 which Kingsley chronicled in her best-selling book "Travels in West Africa". In many ways, the territory covered by Kingsley and Alexander has seen little change in 100 years. From Libreville, Gabon's capital, on the Atlantic coast, Alexander followed Kingsley's trail, encountering the same mud-hut villages, the same stretches of waterway, rain forest and empty savannah. With pluck and determination, Alexander recreates Kingsley's adventures on the Ogooue River, shooting rapids and maneuvering through dangerous waters. Alexander is struck by how such journeys affect a traveler psychologically. "Extended travel in countries very different from one's own demands an ongoing suspension of one's personality. There is often no scope or no point, for example, in asserting preferences in matters as basic as food, shelter, and the ocmpany one keeps, and it is often beyond one's powers to direct one's own itinerary." Alexander manages to invoke Kingsley's spirit without cannibalizing Kingsley's experiences. Alexander is determined to quote sparingly from Kingsley's books so that the reader can discover them for herself. This is a fascinating introduction to a mysterious and compelling place as well as to two adventurous women.