Nearly 100 years ago Mary Henrietta Kingsley made a journey to Africa about which she wrote on her return in Travels in West Africa. In this blend of historical sleuthing and travel writing, Caroline Alexander describes the effect on her of reading Kingsley's book and her decision to make her own journey in Kingsley's footsteps, following her path as closely as possible. Staying at Catholic missions, travelling by pirogue through waterways and rapids, she encounters the ghosts of Trader Horn, Albert Schweitzer and Dr Robert Nasau. But contact with the past gives way to adventures which might have amazed Miss Kingsley.