Casting with a Fragile Thread
A Story of Sisters and Africa
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4.8 • 8 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this poignant, lyric memoir, a sister's tragic death prompts a woman's unbidden journey into her turbulent African past.
A comfortable suburban housewife with three children living in Connecticut, Wendy Kann thought she had put her volatile childhood in colonial Rhodesia—now Zimbabwe—behind her. Then one Sunday morning came a terrible phone call: her youngest sister, Lauren, had been killed on a lonely road in Zambia. Suddenly unable to ignore her longing for her homeland, she decides she must confront the ghosts of her past.
Wendy Kann's is a personal journey, set against a backdrop as exotic as it is desolate. From a privileged colonial childhood of mansions and servants, her story moves to a young adulthood marked by her father's death, her mother's insanity, and the viciousness of a bloody civil war. Through unlikely love she finds herself in the incongruous sophistication of Manhattan; three children bring the security of suburban America, until the heartbreaking vulnerability of the small child her sister left behind in Africa compels her to return to a continent she hardly recognizes.
With honesty and compassion, Kann pieces together her sister's life, explores the heartbreak of loss and belonging, and finally discovers the true meaning of home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Rhodesia declared independence from Britain in 1965, five-year-old Kann, the daughter of white Africans, would entertain her father's tennis party guests by singing, "Rhodesia has sanctions, and I can't have Marmite on my toast!" In her 20s, Kann left what had become Zimbabwe for the U.S. Drawn back to Africa by the sudden death of one of her sisters (in a 1999 car crash in Zambia), Kann found herself reexamining her earlier life. Her alcoholic mother "There should be lots of words to describe drunk mothers, like the Inuit have words for snow" and her morose father had divorced early; the stepmother who raised the girls after their father's suicide was barely able to manage. The country itself had always been in a state of war; as Kann realized when she first met her American husband, "I had never dated a man who hadn't killed someone, or at least been prepared to kill someone." Until recently, writers like Joseph Conrad and Paul Theroux have defined the white colonial experience in literature. Now, with Alexandra Fuller (Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight) and Kann, we're hearing from a different constituency: the daughters. Their tales, Kann's included, make for fascinating reading. Look for PW's upcoming Q&A with Wendy Kann.
