The Rain Queen

​Is there any point in writing a review for a book that’s been (metaphorically) sitting in my TBR pile for over twenty-five years? What has made me decide I must finally get around to reading it? Perhaps it’s a form of nostalgia for a lost way of life, or just in order to round out a trilogy of sorts of “missionary novels” that were popular in the 1980s/1990s and set in the backyard of my own African childhood. The two other novels are A Man Cannot Cry by Gloria Keverne and the more famous The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. *
 
The solemn opening to this novel is the funeral in the mid-1970s of Kate Carrington’s missionary parents who have been brutally murdered. Kate is determined to put her childhood and the notorious events in Tanganyika (Tanzania) behind her, cut all ties. She returns to the family home in Australia, even changing her name so that no-one might know her history. In 1990, she comes into contact with the strange woman, Annah, who lives next door and who also seems to have an African background. Their connection is revealed and the doors to the past are thrown open. Annah’s story takes up most of the book and tells of her experiences, firstly as a devoted missionary nurse, later as a renegade and outcast white woman healer who makes spontaneous or scandalous choices and for which she, and some of those who are associated with her, must pay a high price.
 
There is much here that resonates for me personally, having grown up in an adjacent region and in that time of great change when the old traditions and tribal systems came into conflict with a new Africa emerging from its colonial past. My father often travelled in this territory on business, visiting various centres and meeting many individuals as he did so, so I have a few quibbles about some of the details as to how far from civilization these missionary places really were by the 1960s as Annah’s difficulties with supplies and communications makes it seem more like what life would have been like thirty years earlier.
 
Perhaps there were lone white nurses operating clinics in remote places during what was an extremely volatile and dangerous era throughout much of this part of Africa, but without any indication in the author’s notes to say it inspired by a true story, it is presumed to be complete fiction. It's a novel that some readers will find inspiring while others may not be as moved by some of Annah's actions. The narrative hasn't dated too much although it is slow going in places.
 
Three-and-a-half stars
 
Second-hand copies available from:
 
Amazon.com

Abebooks
 
* My own African novel, Land of the Long Grass, features some missionaries but it is set in an earlier era and is based on truth with a broader adventurous and saga-style focus. It’s also now out of print but copies are available through second-hand dealers. 
 

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