This is a book I picked up on a whim while at Tower Books in Sacramento.
The title caught my eye, as did the cover picture, of a little mop-haired
girl roaring like a lion; the words “National Bestseller” (Oh, really?
I’d never seen it before.) and “Reading Group Guide” did not.

It’s the author’s memoir of her own childhood in Africa–first in
Rhodesia, and later in Malawi and Zambia. Her parents were farmers;
tobacco, mostly, but also cattle. They were members of the white upper
class in Rhodesia, before it became Zimbabwe; later they were simply
members of the white minority wherever they lived.

It was a hard life, both before and after Zimbabwe came to be; I don’t
suppose the life of a farmer is easy in any country, and it was worsened
by circumstances; Fuller’s mother gave birth to five children, of whom
only two lived to adulthood. The second child, a boy, died of meningitis
at an early age; the fourth, a girl, drowned in a duckpond when she was
two years old (and that was a hard section to read, let me tell you); the
fifth was stillborn.

It was a hard life, and as the Fullers had little money and were white
besides, they could only farm the worst land. They stayed, despite the
death of their children, despite tedium, despite alcoholism, because they
loved Africa. Alexandra has married an American and moved to the United
States, but her parents are there still.

This is a poignant book, and is filled with all kinds of fascinating
details about life in Africa; Fuller neither preaches nor moralizes,
trusting that her story will speak for itself, which it does. I didn’t
enjoy it that much, however, for I didn’t like her family all that much,
and it’s not a happy story. Also, it was marred by a self-consciously
literary tone (at one point, the African morning clutters into the room,
which is jarring, though perhaps), and by a too-narrow focus on the
author’s own life. More background on the recent history of Africa and
the countries in which she lived would have been helpful, even if it was
information she didn’t have growing up.

Still, I’m not sorry I read it; it forms an interesting contrast to
several other books I’ll be reviewing in the next couple of days.