Africa
We’re heading west and it should be no surprise that we’re making a stop in Africa! There’s so much going on in Africa that we couldn’t focus on just one country, so we’re doing the whole continent!
Our first African country is the Democratic Republic of the Congo where Tamar Myers’ novel takes place called The Boy Who Stole the Leopard’s Spots. The book is set in the 1950s when the country was still called the Belgian Congo and is the third novel in a loose series following The Witch Doctor’s Wife and The Headhunter’s Daughter. A decades-old murder, a strange superstition, an enormous snake, and one giant secret are about to rock beautiful Belle Vue to its core. The country is in an upheaval and a strange disappearance brings up the past for the denizens of the village. Strangers are coming to their village and a storm divides their village in half – literally. Amanda, a young American missionary, Captain Pierre Jardin of the police and Cripple, the local witch doctor become involved in solving these evil omens and strange happenings before more lives are lost and before the true killer is unmasked.
Next we’re going to stop by Sierra Leone. Lawrence Hill brings us The Book of Negroes which follows a woman named Aminata Diallo and her journey through slavery. When she was 11, Aminata was abducted and forced to walk for months from her village in West Africa to the sea in a line of slaves yoked together. She was sent to South Carolina where she was a slave for many years before she served the British in the Revolutionary War and registered her name in the historic “Book of Negroes.” This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the US for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own. Aminata eventually returned to Sierra Leone with 1,200 other former slaves, crossing the ocean and watching as many ships packed with slaves headed towards America.
There are 56 countries in Africa to visit and we’ll help start you off with your first 2! Click here for your chance to win copies of these books!
