The Road Builder
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Set against the lush background of rural Africa, this luminous and wise novel follows a young couple as they they confront a world of myth, belief, and mysteries.
Will and Kate Haslin have barely begun their relationship when they journey to Central Africa, hoping to chase down family secrets. Kate's willful and distant Uncle Pers is dying, and she sees one last chance to uncover his shadowy past.
and After reaching Ngemba with only the most vague idea about what life in Africa requiresnd with a concrete goal: to uncover the shadowy past of Kate's willful-and dying-Uncle Pers.
After reaching Ngemba with only vague ideas about what life in Africa requires, the young Americans must reshape themselves inside a culture without expectation. And when they learn that Uncle Pers may be The Road Builder, a mysterious figure with a colonial connection, the dangers they face turn personal.
In the tense and hazy village, history merges with myth, fable, and even gossip to create unusual new truths. It's an isolated world of realists and visionaries, and will test every belief that Kate and Will hold dear.
With the seductive prose of a gifted storyteller, The Road Builder weaves sophisticated questions about the nature of truth into an epic yet personal story about romance and exploration.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carefully detailed yet hazily dreamlike, this lengthy first novel convincingly depicts life in a remote and isolated Central African village, as told by an intelligent but passive young American. Will Haslin, an aimless 32-year-old jack-of-all-trades, suddenly finds himself posing (even though they have known each other for only a few months) as the husband of his lover, Kate, a dissertation-writing geologist, for the benefit of Kate's elderly Uncle Pers, who has summoned her to help him finish his memoirs. Originally from Belgium and now settled in California, Uncle Pers is a retired engineer. As they try to organize the memoirs, Kate and Will gradually discover "unconformities," mostly with respect to the time Pers spent in Africa's Kivila Valley. Pressed to fill in the blanks, Pers secures them jobs as "consultants" at a failing palm-oil refining operation in the bush village of Ngemba in an unnamed country (obviously based on the former Belgian Congo) so they can find out for themselves. As Kate and Will struggle with everything from their undefined occupations to the local diet, they gradually begin to hear about a mysterious Road Builder, of whom many stories are told by the village elders. Although he eventually untangles fact from fiction, Will continues to function primarily as an observer rather than an actor, giving his story a static quality reinforced by its length. Even the occasional longueurs, however, support Will's depiction of Ngemban life as otherworldly and unknowable to outsiders, an impression reinforced by the contrasting use of quick-moving present-tense narration for events outside Ngemba and by the large and colorful cast of supporting characters. Hershenow, himself a former Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, delivers a fictional meal as rich, spicy and mysterious as the "bima," or stew of "things," dished out by Will's Ngemban hosts.
