"Not merely the story of AIDS, what the natives call Slim, this is 
the story of a culture and a continent, of at least two faiths serving
God, of love and its sometimes-horrible consequences, of power
and fear, of the strange and the mundane. I am much charmed."
—Lee K. Abbott

    "Behind grim statistics from Africa that tell of dying people, there
must be a million whispers. With experience, compassion, and
skill Whitney has turned up the volume on those whispers, so we
may hear the hopes and sorrows behind the awful numbers. A true
and splendid work."—Jack Cady

    Ruth Linnea Whitney’s debut novel is set in a small African 
country at the start of the AIDS epidemic. The aged president is 
more aggrieved by a journalist calling his country tiny than by the 
presence of the disease decimating it. The novel centers on eight 
people awaking one dry season to the scourge among them—a
divorced young American orthopaedist, a fifty-eight-year-old
Scotswoman of faith and gynecologist by profession, an
idealistic African journalist, a short-sighted president of a 
backward country, an ancient healer, a feckless father ruined by 
promiscuousness and greed, an ill-fated mother far from her native 
village, and a boy whose prophetic images haunt the heart of the 
novel. 

_________________________________________________________

RUTH LINNEA WHITNEY lived for two years in subSaharan Africa. 
She’s volunteered in far corners of the developing world with her 
husband, an orthopaedist. She received her M.A. from the 
University of Nevada (Reno), and has taught English as a Second 
Language at Peninsula College. Her fiction and nonfiction have 
appeared in many venues, including the Chicago Tribune, 
Threepenny Review, and Kaleidoscope. Currently she’s working 
on a memoir. With their Brittany spaniel, Siamese cat, and their 
orange tabby, she and her husband live in Port Townsend, 
Washington. They have two grown sons.



What people are saying about this book

"A fine novel—beautifully written and about something. I felt the
grief, the evil, and then the hope, magic, and strength."—Lynn Knight

"How refreshing to read a book about a foreign culture and to see an
author take pains to describe and develop the nuance of that setting
and culture. A strong and engaging novel."—Tony Ardizzone

"The invisible world is as actual as the dust on the roads or the
crackling sedge under the cooking pot. This book honors the
people whose stories it tells. Powerful, well-crafted and honorable."
—Mary Hood