BETWEEN THE SUNLIGHT & THE THUNDER

Keith Meadows. Paperback. New.

From the pen of the late Keith Meadows who brought us Sand in the Windand other books.

Few countries have felt the tumult of the winds of change more than Kenya, Congo and the country once known as Rhodesia. And long before Harold Macmillan made those words famous in Cape Town in February 1960 when he addressed the South African government, Gil Freeman had already felt the full force of their violence. On a farm at the foot of the Aberdare Mountains in Kenya, his parents and his sister were slaughtered by the anti-government disciples of Mau Mau in February 1953. He was seventeen years old. From a volunteer in the government security forces responding to the brutality of the Mau Mau offensive, to professional hunter, to game warden, Gil remains in Kenya for the next decade, moving on in due course to the Congo and then Rhodesia.

Following his mixed fortunes, Between the Sunlight and the Thunder is a major novel of a fast-changing Africa that covers 25 years of colonial history when those winds wreaked havoc on people and wildlife alike. In a blend of fact and fiction, of real-life, disguised and invented characters in three countries, this historical novel, whilst harrowing, is also insightful and hauntingly beautiful, written by a person whose knowledge and love of Africa bleeds through every page. Woven into the story is the eternal triangle, the consequences of which evolve against the background of one of the most explosive periods of African history.