For God and Glory

The suppression by the British of a tribal rebellion in 1896 Rhodesia forms the subject of this robust, uncompromisingly realistic new novel (after A Marriage of Convenience, etc.) from Jeal, biographer of African adventurers David Livingstone and Robert Baden-Powell. Robert Haslam, indefatigable nonconformist missionary, whisks his naive young bride, Clara Musson, from England to the African bush, where he aims to convert Chief Mponda and his tribe to Christianity. High-spirited Clara, however, oscillating between awe of her husband and repulsion at his fanatical zeal, is dismayed by a continent festering with disease, witchcraft, female circumcision, wife-beating and atrocities inflicted by black and white alike. Her disillusionment turns to fear when Mponda's murderous son, Makufa, determined to save his father from the disgrace of baptism, hatches a rebellion. Clara gains the protection, and then love, of a quixotic British captain, Francis Vaughan, who futilely tries to enlist Haslam in a plan to snuff out the simmering revolt. In the novel's violent conclusion, British troops armed with Maxim guns crush the uprising, slaughtering spear-carrying warriors who view Christian missionaries as front-men for relentless colonial exploitation. The light Jeal shines is harsh, but it brightly illumines the forces--both foreign and indigenous--that have warped Africa's socioeconomic development. (Aug.)