I was hoping to find the next Lady Julia Grey mystery on one of my trips to the library last summer, but no such luck. And at that time the Yarmouth library wasn’t participating in inter-library loan programs, so it was a hassle to request books. (I’m hoping that process is easier in Auburn – although the Auburn library may charge me for it?!)
(Oh no wait – apparently they charge if the book is requested from a library outside of the State. That totally makes sense. Phew!)
But the library did have this stand-alone novel by Deanna Raybourn (the author of the Lady Julia Grey novels), and I decided to give it a shot.
Reader, I’m so glad I did.
The story takes place after WWI, and begins in Paris. Our narrator, Delilah Drummond, is a party girl. She’s been married three times, and divorced once. Her first marriage, to Johnny, ended when he was killed in WWI. Her second marriage to Quentin was amicable, but ultimately not a union to be maintained. They are still very friendly with each other – and at times, sexual, even though Quentin has since remarried and had children. Quentin is also her solicitor.
Delilah’s third husband, Misha, has just committed suicide. And the papers and gossip rags are all proclaiming that he killed himself over the idea that Delilah was going to divorce him too, but in reality, he had received a cancer diagnosis and, well, this is the 1920s, there aren’t a lot of options for palliative care.
All of this gossip is hounding Delilah and her equally-dramatic mother, Mossy. While Delilah is fine with waiting the gossip out, it is Mossy who suggests that Delilah escape the scene and go to Africa. Mossy’s favorite ex-husband, Nigel, owns Fairlight, an estate outside of Nairobi. She agrees to go, and is accompanied by her much shyer and almost mousy cousin, Dora, whose nickname is Dodo.
On the train, Delilah reads from her guidebook on Kenya to Dodo:
I pointed out one bridge from my guidebook as we crossed it. “This is the Tsavo bridge, Dodo. When it was built, a pair of man-eating lions spent nine months gobbling up the crew. It says here they ate more than a hundred men.” [p. 39-40]
[That was only funny to me because I follow @SUEtheTRex on Twitter and every April 1, they let the Tsavo Lions take over their Twitter feed. I love SUE the T-Rex, everyone should go follow them RIGHT NOW.]
[SUE uses nongendered pronouns. Because they’re awesome.]
Upon arriving in Nairobi, Delilah meets Ryder White in a very memorable way – he goes up to a creep that had tried to hit on Delilah on the train, and Ryder horsewhips the creep in front of everyone because the creep is also an abusive husband. The next morning, Ryder is the one to drive Delilah and Dodo to Fairlight. Delilah is horrified at the state of the place – rancid food, crops failing – and she and Dodo resolve to restore Fairlight while they’re there.
The next morning, tribal women come to Fairlight for healing. Delilah, who had been a nurse during WWI, does what she can, and the next time Ryder comes by, she asks for supplies. He arranges to get her what she needs. Throughout the course of the book, Delilah continues to care for the people who live near Fairlight.
Meanwhile, former friends of Delilah’s happen to live nearby – Rex and Helen, cohorts of Delilah’s mother. Rex is hoping to help garner Kenya’s independence from Britain, and aspires to be the first Governor. Meanwhile, Helen and Rex are both sleeping around on each other. Their artist friend, Kit, is living in the cottage attached to their villa, within easy walking distance of Fairlight. Kit has also been a former lover of Delilah’s, and when she learns of his presence, they resume their fuck-buddy status while he paints for his next art show.
Ryder introduces Delilah to Gideon, a Masai man of the village who helps Ryder on his safaris and hunting trips. He and Ryder have an easy friendship, and Gideon shares some of his knowledge of Ryder with Delilah. He and Delilah grow to be friends; he introduces her to his babu (grandfather), a mark of high honor and respect.
Meanwhile, Fairlight’s groundskeeper, Gates, has come back from a vacation and does not like taking orders from women. Later on, Dodo finds out that Gates has overtaken a field that’s meant to grow pyrethrum has been turned into a field for cannabis – and in a move that shocks Alaina, Delilah doesn’t like that and orders the field to be mowed under.
It was another of the sad pyrethrum fields and I turned to Dodo with a shrug.
“So? It’s another few acres of a poor crop that ought to be plowed under.”
“Look again.”
I moved into the field, pushing past the first several rows of pyrethrum, and straight into something quite different.
I turned back to Dodo. “You must be joking.”
“No. Cannabis sativa. Hundreds of plants. The pyrethrum is only the border, no doubt for camouflage.” [p. 245]
I mean, I don’t understand why Delilah didn’t see that as a huge financial opportunity! Isn’t the post-WWI time period one of the best time periods for reefer madness? Maybe I’ve just been listening to my friend moan about how the marijuana legalization effort in Maine has not gone fast enough for him for too long (and maybe I also really really want that sweet, sweet sales tax revenue to benefit the state), but why wouldn’t Delilah consider a field full of pot a surprise goldmine?
Anyway. She fires Gates – and relishes it, after she learns he’s been beating Moses, Gideon’s younger brother that she hired to watch the cattle.
Later, Delilah is invited to a dinner party by Helen – Rex is out of town. Unbeknownst to Delilah, Helen regularly hosts dinner parties when Rex is away. And when I say “dinner party,” I totally mean “drug-fueled orgies”. Ryder happens to show up during the main course, and when the pairings-off begin, he grabs Delilah and they escape. On their way back to Fairlight they both succumb to their mutual attraction, but Ryder tells her that the relationship can’t continue because he knows that she plans on leaving Africa.
There are hunts for lions, and watching the wildlife amble about the landscape, and Delilah slowly falls in love with Africa. And it’s beautiful, and heartrending, and just … *sigh*
Together we watched the giraffe come and drink at the far edge of lake Wanyama. It was a small herd, just a few cows with their calves and a few adolescent males trailing behind. They were graceful and silent, bobbing their heads down at a ridiculous angle to get to the water. A crowned crane waded nearby, breaking the water into small ripples that flowed over to our edge, connecting us. And suddenly, the feeling Moses had conjured grew so strong and so deep I felt I could just float away on it. I was in love, really in love for the first time in a very long time, maybe the first time ever. And it was with this place, this Africa, as real to me as any man. The grey-green water of the Tana River was his blood and his pulse was the steady beat of the native drums. The red dust of his flesh smelled of sage from the blue stems of the leleshwa and sweetness from the jasmine and under it all the sharp copper tang of blood. In the heart of the Rift lay his heart, and his bones were the very rocks. Africa was lover, teacher and mentor, and I could not leave him. [p. 347-348]
Oh shit, I skipped ahead. There is a mystery in the book – it develops slowly, and I don’t want to spoil it. The above quote is towards the end, after the mystery has been solved, and – SPOILER ALERT! – Delilah does decide to stay in Africa. But the plot about the mystery and also how she connects with the people that live near Fairlight is just so beautiful, that I really did cry like, a few times while reading it.
So if you like love stories and stories about people finding themselves and also Africa, you would probably really like this book.
Grade for A Spear of Summer Grass: 4 stars
That's What She Read 