It’s hard to know where to start with this profoundly gorgeous book. Evocative, lyrical, powerful…this book grabs the reader by the throat and forces one to look at the survivors of the Rwandan genocide, and it doesn’t let go easily as I found myself continuously thinking of this story well after turning the final page. First, the characters – oh my, the deeply complex, beautifully fleshed out people who inhabit these pages: Lillian, a young girl involved in the beginnings of the civil rights movement in America, who eventually moves to Rwanda and starts an orphanage; Henry, the white man Lillian loves during a time it wasn’t allowed, a photographer, a father, a wanderer, a lost man; Tucker, a young medical student who comes to Rwanda seeking meaning in his life; Rachel, Henry’s daughter and grieving mother, who seeks answers about her father to fill the empty spaces in her heart; Chloe and Nadine, survivors of the genocide, living victims whose lives will never be the same; and most importantly, the country of Rwanda, the land of 10,000 hills, whose land is rich with both tradition and hate, the land that needs to heal and regrow. Author Jennifer Haupt, a journalist who gathered the stories of the Rwandan survivors and wove it into a breathtakingly beautiful book, shows great talent in her debut novel. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
–Laurie Mullarky, Village Books, Bellingham, WA
Look for this novel– a paperback original perfect for book clubs— at Village Books and other independent bookstores near you. For more of Laurie’s picks, visit her blog.
Meet Seattle author Jennifer Haupt at bookstores around the region this spring and summer, including Friday March 30 at Herringbone Books in Redmond, OR, a big launch party Friday April 6 at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, and Village Books in Bellingham, WA on May 6.