Leopard at the Door

Listeners who love Alexandra Fuller's memoirs will appreciate this story of a changing Kenya. Katharine McEwan's narration, sprinkled with Swahili phrases, vividly details the various voices of two cultures. She tells Rachel's story, starting with her return as a young woman after six years in England. McEwan juxtaposes Rachel's childhood memories with the current turmoil. Her tone softens with wistful remembering, intermingled with the increasing intensity of racial unease that mushrooms into the bloody 1950s Mau Mau Rebellion against the British. Torn between two worlds, Rachel is forced to face ugly realities: brutal violence, broken taboos, and gender power struggles. McEwan draws listeners into these chilling dramas, and as she urgently tells it, nothing remains the same for Rachel or for the nation of Kenya. R.T. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

January 9, 2017
McVeigh (The Fever Tree) explores the beauty of Kenya’s culture and landscape while simultaneously keeping the tension of impending conflict immediate and pressing in this captivating and thought-provoking story. When 18-year-old Rachel returns to Kenya during the 1950s, she expects to find her home unchanged. After her mother’s death, she spent six years in an English boarding school, dreaming of the peaceful African plains; however, the Kenya she returns to is a place of great political turmoil. The society of the Mau Mau want to take back their land from the white settlers with methods that are growing increasingly violent. Rachel feels the friction at home as well, with her father’s new English girlfriend running the household under tight control by ensuring the Kenyan servants fear her. Unwilling to succumb to prejudice, Rachel must face constant disapproval for the time she spends in the servants’ quarters. Her only confidant is her former tutor, a Kenyan man named Michael, who now works as a mechanic on the farm. McVeigh’s beautiful prose and harrowing plot will quickly absorb readers, particularly those interested in 1950s Africa, by sensitively approaching themes of race, cultural evolution, and the humanness that unites us all. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Gernert Company.