Rainbow's End
A Memoir of Childhood, War and an African Farm
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A captivating and haunting memoir by celebrated children's author Lauren St John about her childhood spent in rural Africa.
In 1978, during the final, bloodiest phase of the Rhodesian War, 11-year-old Lauren St John moved with her family to Rainbow's End, and idyllic farm and game reserve on the banks of the Umfuli River. Obsessed with horses, pop stars and her pet giraffe, Lauren lived in an African paradise until the brutal murder of a school friend and the coming of independence forced her to confront the past - to realise that almost everything she'd believed about her country and her life had been a lie.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set against the backdrop of the Rhodesian civil war, St. John's memoir (after 2003's Hardcore Troubadour) of growing up on a farm and game preserve in the 1970s deftly conjures up the smells and sounds of the African bush and the era's climate of unashamed racism and feverish patriotism. In April 1975, after a sojourn in South Africa, St. John and her family returned to Rhodesia: her South African- born father, Errol, longed to defend his adopted homeland from the nationalist threat. When not away "fighting black terrorists," he managed a farm called Rainbow's End, where four previous tenants, including the author's classmate, were murdered by guerrillas. In exuberant prose, St. John, who was born in 1966, conveys a 12-year-old's wonder of roaming her own private game park, but the child's voice darkens when she notices the "maroon punctuation mark of dried blood" on her bedroom wall. Scenes evoking the land's great beauty dissolve into unsettling images of slaughter, and St. John faces her family's politics as she matures. Though St. John's memoir is not as tight or pitch-perfect as Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, she bears witness to a remarkable story.
