What happens when an aid worker gets romantically and politically involved in the field? This is the true story of Emma Mccune, a British worker in Sudan, whose romance and marriage to a Sudanese rebel leader destroyed the ideals that brought her to Africa.

The man Emma married, Riek Machar, is one of two main combatants in the current civil war in South Sudan . ( )

Fascinating- the author does a great job of sequencing background information about Emma, interview with colleagues and friends from different times in her life, and presenting the actual events as she observed them in Sudan. You end up feeling jealous of Emma for her verve, then awed by her dedication, then annoyed at her blindness and impracticality, then just sorry for her because it seems that everything led up to her impossible predicament. I sympathized with a lot of the people presented, and for the first time caught a glimpse of what some of Africa is like... ( )

Fascinating- the author does a great job of sequencing background information about Emma, interview with colleagues and friends from different times in her life, and presenting the actual events as she observed them in Sudan. You end up feeling jealous of Emma for her verve, then awed by her dedication, then annoyed at her blindness and impracticality, then just sorry for her because it seems that everything led up to her impossible predicament. I sympathized with a lot of the people presented, and for the first time caught a glimpse of what some of Africa is like... ( )

I found value in this book for its reportage from the horn of Africa in the 80’s and early 90’s. I was also interested in reading the author’s perspective of the Sudanese civil wars, as there isn’t that much out there on the topic that is easily digestible. Scroggins does a good job of explaining some of the geo-political and ethnic dimensions that led to strife in the country. I appreciated her examination of the events surrounding the oil finds, the practice of Arab slavery over the blacks, the famine migrations, and the politics surrounding UN efforts at providing food to the starving. She gives the reader a lot of information that connects various threads on the Islamist Movement in North Africa from the tycoons Tiny Rowland and Adan Khoshoggi, to Ossama Bin Laden and Muammar Gadaffi. I just can’t call this a “good read” because there are so many disconnected tangents that the author takes the reader on for pages and pages, often inserted with her own opinions, which I found at best annoying. It is chock-full of historical events and personalities, which I did like. The story of the polygamous marriage of Emma McCune and Riek Machar, the former war-lord and current first vice-president of independent South Sudan, is rather peripheral to the author’s meanderings on her own personal experiences in the region and the events of the time period. Their story is of two opportunists, whose lives collided, providing little meat in way of her humanitarian efforts or their great love story, as the book’s description promised. Emma is depicted as a vainglorious, promiscuous, adventure-seeker whose life does not merit nor can fill an entire book, as Scroggins demonstrates. After Emma’s accidental death, Riek goes on to yet again break his promise of monogamy to his first wife, Angelina Teny, when the next western woman offering to provide assistance to his cause comes along. In contrast to Emma McCune, Angelina Teny, former minister of energy of mining and extremely active in the women's movement in Sudan, would indeed merit having a book written about her life. ( )

provides copious information about the political complexities of Sudan and its long civil war. Helpful insights into development and function of NGOs.