Penny Haw's moving novel Follow Me to Africa imagines pioneering British archeologist Mary Leakey at the beginning and end of her career. In dual narratives, Haw explores the 1930s genesis of Leakey's career and marriage, as well as her tentative friendship, much later, with a struggling teenage girl named Grace, and their attempts to care for Lisa, a wounded cheetah who needs their help.
In 1983, Grace grieves her mother's death and struggles to interact with the father she resents, who has brought Grace to spend a summer at rugged, beautiful Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where Leakey has lived and worked for many years. Intrigued by her interactions with Lisa and determined to help the cheetah, Grace soon realizes she has much to learn--about wild animals and the world beyond her cramped childhood in England.
Haw (The Woman at the Wheel) paints a sensitive portrait of a woman dedicated to her chosen career and her complex relationship with her brilliant, mercurial husband and fellow archeologist, Louis. Leakey grows from a shy young illustrator into a confident woman determined to forge her own path, no matter how far she has to travel to do it. Together, Leakey and Grace care for Lisa, and Leakey shares pieces of her experiences with Grace, empowering the girl to begin to imagine a life in which she, too, could be responsible for her own future.
Set against the harsh beauty of the Serengeti, Follow Me to Africa is a fascinating fictional account of a real-life trailblazer and a thoughtful depiction of multigenerational friendship. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams