4.5 stars ( )

Three Weeks in December by Audrey Schulman has two timelines to follow and in this case, the reader benefits from having two exciting storylines that alternate chapter by chapter. In one, it is 1899 and a young American engineer has come to Africa to help build bridges for the railroad. At the Tsavo River, he finds himself having to hunt two man-eating lions that are stalking the Indian workers and the natives in the area. The other storyline is set in 2000, and involves a female botanist who has Aspergers Syndrome. She has come to Rwanda to hunt for a medicinal vine in the mountain gorilla habitat. Meanwhile, a vicious warlord and his army of gun-toting children are moving ever closer.

I enjoyed both storylines and thought they were exciting and realistic. The author built the suspense to the point where I couldn‘t put the book down. The facts about both the lions and the gorillas was interesting and well researched. I also enjoyed reading of an adult with Aspergers as up to this point most of my reading on that subject has been about children with the syndrome. What kept this book from a solid 4.0 rating was the editing as several spelling and grammar mistakes were obvious. I hate it when errors like this can pull one right out of the story.

Three Weeks in December was a great escape read and I will certainly keep this author in mind when I need another good adventure read. ( )

in the eraly 1900s, engineer from Maine goes to kenya to build a railroad. conflicts about living among Africans ( )

A goodreads acquaintance said this is one of the best books she's read this year. Because it's set in East Africa in the 1890s (and central Africa now), I borrowed it immediately. I like it so far and so was dismayed to come across a fragment on page 36. Unlike the risible but wrong misplaced modifiers in the book I just shunted into the Donate pile, this fragment is obvious to any lay reader, let alone a copy editor: "One was that the cause in the brain at all, but in the gut." Verbs useful. The verb the one word a sentence a sentence.

That was fun!

In the same paragraph is another fragment, this one less egregious because purposeful: "The person's nerves jangling with a morphine-induced intensity."

Mm, I want to like this, so I should step away until I'm in a more forgiving frame of mind: "The plane left tomorrow, the lab equipment was already packed" (39).

The next day: Incidences instead of incidents? Really? (42)



Eh, drat. I had a long rant about how the spelling errors, wrong punctuation, and bad grammar ruined the experience of what could have been a great novel, but through my own stupidity I lost it. So. Instead of recompiling all the page numbers, I'll spare you. Great characters and plots, interesting parallels between the two threads, but technical errors ripped me out of the story with almost physical pain.

I will look up the page of one great simile: "After a day in the jungle, Yoko's hair was standing straight up, a little like a cockatiel's feathers" (221). It is only the crest feathers on a cockatiel that can stand erect and the rest of its feathers have no more erectile power than those of any other bird, but the cockatiel is so neglected in literature that I'll allow the broader statement.

Nicely developing characters between two seemingly unrelated stories. What does a man in 1799 who is coming to terms with his homosexuality have in common with a nowadays researcher living with Aspergers? Nothing, or maybe the coming to terms, or Africa. And still the two stories weave nicely together, both capture the reader, and the outcome of the story of both is touching. Overlying the stories is a beautiful description of gorillas and lions, a strong plot in both stories and well developed support characters. ( )