Library Journal Review

By Sally Bissell, Lee County Library System, Ft. Myers, FL 

Back to White Dog Fell From the Sky

 In 1976, South Africa’s apartheid policy forces medical student Isaac Muthethe to leave family behind for the shelter of a more democratic Botswana. There he encounters two people who will alter the trajectory of his well-planned life. Hired by idealistic American Alice Mendelssohn, Isaac becomes a trusted gardener and caretaker. Alice, traveling on government business, embarks on a passionate affair with the older, charismatic Ian, a man whose love of Africa matches her own, while Isaac becomes involved with a friend from home, now a member of the South African resistance. When two acts of violence, one natural and one human-made, put a cruel end to the dreams of each character, the infinite, healing power of love is put to the test. 

VERDICT: Recipient of a Best Regional Fiction in the Northeast award for An Unexpected Forest, Morse writes heartbreakingly of isolation, loss, and the soul-deadening effect of torture. Her mesmerizing descriptions of Africa will leave readers wondering how a continent of such beauty can harbor so much evil. Like Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan or Chris Bohjalian’s The Sandcastle Girls, this is for readers unafraid to plumb the depths of human emotion.