White Dog Fell from the Sky
Praise for White Dog Fell from the Sky
“White Dog Fell from the Sky catches the soul of compassion. It is one of the wisest, most comprehensive, most compelling books I’ve ever read. Neither human nor beast is treated sentimentally, but the capacity to care is celebrated here in a way that is politically and personally cogent. It’s a wild and woolly story in a faraway land, yet its relevance is present in our own imperfect hearts: who and how to love and when and why to stop. Here’s the real thing, a book of genuine intellect and inspiration, superbly written, fascinating.”
— Sena Jeter Naslund, New York Times bestselling author of Ahab’s Wife
“White Dog Fell from the Sky is that rare thing: a convinced and convincing love story. Past that—and this novel’s reach is wide—it reminds us, tellingly, how Africa is mother of us all.”
— Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Soul’s Rising and The Color of Night
“Magic, friendship, the tragedy of apartheid, and the triumph of loyalty are recounted in poetic, powerful prose by this unconventional and intelligent writer. Shattering and uplifting.”
— Kuki Gallman, author of I Dreamed of Africa
Botswana, 1976. Isaac Muthethe thinks that he is dead. Smuggled across the border from South Africa in a hearse, he awakens covered in dust, staring at blue sky and the face of White Dog. Far from dead, he is, for the first time, in a country without apartheid. A medical student in South Africa, he was forced to flee after witnessing a friend murdered by white members of the South African Defense Force.
Walking along the road into Gaborone, Botswana’s capital, White Dog following close behind, a chance encounter with an old school acquaintance changes the course of what follows. Petrified of deportation and determined to find work, Isaac sets out to find work and is hired by a young American woman, Alice Mendelssohn, who abandoned her PhD studies to follow her husband to Botswana.
Five years later, her marriage over, Alice sets off on a work trip to the vast bush that she loves—alternately austere and lush—leaving her home in the care of her newly hired gardener, Isaac. It is on this trip that she meets Ian, an expert on the !Kung San and a rebellious, untamable man more than twenty years her senior, with whom she imagines a very different future.
Returning home, she finds Isaac missing and White Dog waiting at the end of the drive, dehydrated and malnourished. When she goes in search of him, what she finds out will change her life.
White Dog Fell From the Sky, Eleanor Morse's rich and intimate portrait of Botswana and of three people whose intertwined lives are at once tragic and extraordinary, is an absorbing and moving story.
