Hans Olofson is the son of a Swedish lumberjack. His early life is isolated and difficult, overshadowed by the disappearance of his mother. When he loses both his best friend, and then his girlfriend in tragic circumstances, his only remaining desire is to fulfil her dream of visiting the grave of a legendary missionary, deep in the remote hills of Northern Zambia.On reaching Africa, Olofson is struck by its beauty and mystery. After fulfilling his initial quest, an opportunity...
The novel opens in England in 1915, at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragist and one of the first women to integrate Cambridge University. Her decision to starve herself for the cause informs and echoes in the later, overlapping narratives of her descendants. Among them are her daughter Evie, who becomes a professor of chemistry at Barnard College in the middle of the century and never marries...
.jpg)
.jpg)
