I’m excited about our August Book Of The Month BuddyRead.
Beryl Clutterbuck Markham was a British-born Kenyan aviator (one of the first bush pilots), adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first woman to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from east to west. She wrote about these adventures in her memoir, West with the Night. Out of Africa is written by Beryl’s friend Karen Blixen pen name Isak Dinsen. Paula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman—Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, who as Isak Dinesen wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa.
Brought to Kenya from England as a child and then abandoned by her mother, Beryl is raised by both her father and the native Kipsigis tribe who share his estate. Her unconventional upbringing transforms Beryl into a bold young woman with a fierce love of all things wild and an inherent understanding of nature’s delicate balance. But even the wild child must grow up, and when everything Beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships.
Beryl forges her own path as a horse trainer, and her uncommon style attracts the eye of the Happy Valley set, a decadent, bohemian community of European expats who also live and love by their own set of rules. But it’s the ruggedly charismatic Denys Finch Hatton who ultimately helps Beryl navigate the uncharted territory of her own heart. The intensity of their love reveals Beryl’s truest self and her fate: to fly.
Beryl’s life fascinates me, so to read more about her will be, for me, so much fun. I am also going to read her memoir West With the Night and Out of Africa written by her friend. There is a children’s book: The Good Lion that I just discovered and have ordered to read as well. I love reading all angles of a story, especially when it is a true story. The discussions should be interesting and I can’t wait for Sunday afternoons to participate in them. I also plan to watch the movie Out of Africa. Undecided if I will watch it during my reading or after.
What’s more fun than reading?!
Reading on….
Peace.
“My father and I settled in Africa in 1906. . . . And it was there, as a small girl, I was eaten by a lion.”
So begins a true story from aviatrix Beryl Markham’s autobiography. Here young Beryl and a “tame” lion called Paddy come together in an encounter that challenges our notions of wild and docile, trust and duplicity, punishment and forgiveness. Coupled with Don Brown’s expressive watercolors, The Good Lion is a powerful story that will leave readers wondering about the true natures of man and beast.
