Farmer, Nancy. A Girl Named Disaster

The 'girl named disaster' of the title is Nhamo, a preteen in a tiny village in western Mozambique, near the border with Zimbabwe. Her mother is dead, her father abandoned the family, her village has just been afflicted with an outbreak of cholera--and so she finds herself about to be forced into an arranged marriage with a man who has several wives already. With her grandmother's help, she takes a boat and flees the village towards Zimbabwe to seek out her father, who works in the chrome mines in Mtoroshanga.

This divides the book neatly into three sections: Nhamo's life in the village with her cousin and her wise grandmother, what happens after she reaches Zimbabwe, and the largest section, in which Nhamo tries to survive on her journey, alone for months and living off the land. This part is fascinating in the same way Julie of the Wolves was fascinating, rich with closely researched detail and plants and food and danger and spirits.

Throughout the book, Nhamo sees the spirit of her dead mother, of the dead fisherman Crocodile Guts, and the water spirits called njuzu, giving her advice, helping her forward. This, too, is fascinating; it's a very respectful and matter-of-fact depiction of the spirit world, and it's easy to see how real to her these spirits are.

A book like this could very easily become fiction-as-textbook, a book written as a primer on life in Mozambique and Zimbabwe first and foremost, and who cares if it's interesting? But despite a little too much exposition in the opening statements, this is a book that's very personal, a book about a single girl--it doesn't try to be a definitive statement of Africa and its cultures. And that makes it of much more than didactic interest--although you'll probably learn something from it.