Starlings Laughing: A Memoir of Africa

Clark ( Wild Eden ) looks back on a life of adventure and personal difficulty in Africa. Raised in a Rhodesian mining town, she started a farm near Bulawayo and lived for many years in a tent on an island in the Okavango Swamp Delta in Bechuanaland (now Botswana). She and her first husband hunted crocodiles, ran safaris and convinced the local tribes to create the Moremi Wildlife Reserve, the first such reserve in Africa. Clark was able to make pets of lions and jackals and survive encounters with leopards, wounded lions, pythons and veld fires, yet for 25 years she was unable to disentangle herself from her destructive marriage. Now living in England with her second husband, she paints a vivid picture of a stormy first marriage as well as of the land and the people of southern Africa during the final days of British colonialism. Photos not seen by PW. (May)