Book Review: The Girl Who Married an Eagle by Tamar Myers

The 1960s in the Belgian Congo, Africa, a few years before the country's independence.

Story: A young girl in the Bashilele tribe runs away during her wedding, escapes into the bush and is attacked by a pack of hyenas but the girl, Buakane, is found by a white missionary, before the hyenas can do serious harm. The missionary takes her to a boarding school for girls like herself,  runaway child brides. The school is run by Belgian missionaries in the Congo.

Julia Newton, a young college graduate from Ohio, joins the missionaries as a teacher in the school. This is the story of Julia and the story of the runaway Buakane, both different in background and points of view, but both having to adapt to an environment strange to them, though for different reasons.

Comments: I liked that the story was told with a lot of humor, even though the setting in the African bush was alarming for Julia, as she had to be constantly on the alert for hyenas, poisonous snakes, and the threat of revenge by the Bashilele warriors who might come to the school at any time to retrieve their runaway brides. Julia is considered unsuitable for missionary work by the other missionaries as she challenges their stringent and narrow rules and outlook. She is befriended though by Hank, a widowed missionary, and his young daughter, Clementine, and by her house helper, the astute African woman called Cripple.

As this story is based on the author's experience growing up in a missionary family in the Belgian Congo, I took the situation, the dangers, the differences in culture to be fairly close to fact. I liked that the story was told from both points of view, the Africans' and the white missionaries'.  Both groups viewed each other's appearance, habits, beliefs, food, and culture with equal amounts of alarm, dismay, and even disgust. Tamar Myer's style of writing brings humor and clarity to the story, however, and is very charming in its own way.

I highly recommend this for mystery lovers and for those who want to know more about the lives of missionaries in Africa.

Title: The Girl Who Married an Eagle by Tamar Myers
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Original edition (April 30, 2013)
Genre: mystery set in the Belgian Congo era
Objective rating: 5/5

For more reviews of the book, visit the TLC Book Tour schedule.

About the author: Tamar Myers was born and raised in the Belgian Congo (now just the Congo). Her parents were missionaries to a tribe which, at that time, were known as headhunters and used human skulls for drinking cups. Hers was the first white family ever to peacefully coexist with the tribe.

Tamar grew up eating elephant, hippopotamus and even monkey. She attended a boarding school that was two days away by truck, and sometimes it was necessary to wade through crocodile infested waters to reach it. Other dangers she encountered as a child were cobras, deadly green mambas, and the voracious armies of driver ants that ate every animal (and human) that didn’t get out of their way.

 Today Tamar lives in the Carolinas with her American-born husband. She is the author of 36 novels (most of which are mysteries), a number of published short stories, and hundreds of articles on gardening. Find out more about Tamar and her books at her website.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the author/publisher for a review galley of this book. 

Book Feature: The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots by Tamar Myers

Title: The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots: A Mystery
Author: Tamar Myers
Genre: historical mystery
William Morrow Paperbacks; May 8, 2012
Source: publisher

Opening sentences: 
"It was much cooler in the canyon that lay in front of, and below, the village. Over centuries the crystal clear spring had carved itself a bed two hundred meters lower than the surrounding savannah. Erosion had widened this space enough to accommodate a forest with trees large enough to require buttress roots, their crowns soaring up to neck-craning heights. It was a place of magic, awe, and, of course, much superstition.... One night the chief stayed in the canyon to kill a leopard that had ben terrorizing his village. This is the story of what happened, and how it came to be that a boy could steal a leopard's spots, and what that would mean for that boy when he grew into a man." ( from the Prologue) 

About the book:

American missionary Amanda, police chief Captain Pierre Jardin, and the local witch doctor and his wife, Cripple, all become embroiled in the mystery as evil omens and strange happenings in the village of Belle Vue in the Belgian Congo suggest more lives will be lost before a killer is unmasked. (from the book description)

Antiques Mysteries

Killer Keepsakes (A Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery, Book #4) by Jane K. Cleland

Antiques mysteries are among my favorites. Just found Killer Keepsakes by Jane K. Cleland, who also wrote Antiques To Die for, Deadly Appraisal, and Consigned to Death. The titles sound dreadful, but they are cozy mysteries and not full of violence or gore.

The Ming and I by Tamar Myers

The Ming and I has a similar theme on its front cover and is also an antiques mystery. I remember this book as being very funny. In fact, the entire series is humorous. Myers also writes a more serious cozy, the Magdalena Yoder Pennsylvania Dutch mysteries.

Part of Thankfully Reading Weekend reading.

Book Review: As the World Churns by Tamar Myers

It takes 3 avocados and half a pint of heavy cream, plus milk, lemon juice, and sugar to make this recipe for avocado ice cream I found in As the World Churns, a Pennsylania Dutch Mystery with recipes by Tamar Myers. There are also recipes for Amish style chocolate, honey, creamy orange, and butter pecan ice cream.

The book's main character Magdalena Yoder of Hernia, Penn., an Amish/Mennonite innkeeper, charges her guests extra for the "full Amish experience" - in other words, they pay more to make their own beds and help with the chores! I enjoy the puns and wit of the hilarious Magdalena.

The setting for this mystery novel is a cow competition, the Hernia Holstein Competition, which brings out-of-town farmers and their prize Holsteins to Magdalena's PennDutch Inn, which puts up man and beast alike. The cows are put up the barn, of course.

The death of an old vet who claims to find something strange about one of the cows' udders puts Magdalena in sleuthing mode. I'm reading on to find the outcome. Drugs in the udder? Radioactive milk? A Holstein that's not a Holstein? You can never tell with mysteries!