White Dog Fell from the Sky, Eleanor Morse
White Dog Fell from the Sky, Eleanor Morse
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White Dog Fell from the Sky

Author: Eleanor Morse

Narrator: Carla Mercer-Meyer

Unabridged: 14 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/28/2013


Synopsis

Botswana, 1976. Isaac Muthethe thinks he is dead. Smuggled across the border from South Africa in a hearse, he awakens covered in dust, staring at blue sky and the face of White Dog. Far from dead, he is, for the first time, in a country without apartheid. A medical student in South Africa, he was forced to flee after witnessing a friend murdered by white members of the South African Defense Force.

Walking along the road into Gaborone, Botswana's capital, White Dog following close behind, a chance encounter with an old school acquaintance changes the course of Isaac's life. Amen, a member of the ANC, the South African resistance movement, invites Isaac to stay with his family. Petrified of deportation and determined to find work, he swears he will stay just for a few days. He sets out to find work and is hired by a young American woman, Alice Mendelssohn, who is living in Botswana with her husband, Lawrence.

A year later, her marriage an empty shell, Alice sets off on a work-related trip to the vast bush that she loves—alternately austere and lush, with light that blinds—leaving her home in the care of her new gardener, Isaac. It is on this trip that she meets Ian, an expert on the !Kung San and a rebellious, untamable man twenty years her senior, with whom she imagines a very different future.

Returning home, Alice finds Isaac missing and White Dog waiting loyally at the end of the drive, dehydrated and malnourished. When she goes in search of Isaac, what she finds out will change her life.


About Eleanor Morse

Eleanor Morse is the author of Chopin's Garden and An Unexpected Forest, which won the Independent Publisher's Gold Medalist Award for Best Regional Fiction in the Northeast U.S. and was also selected as the winner of Best Published Fiction by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance at the 2008 Maine Literary Awards. A graduate of Swarthmore College, Eleanor currently works as an adjunct faculty member with Spalding University's MFA writing program in Louisville, Kentucky. She lives on Peaks Island, Maine.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jill on February 26, 2013

Every now and then, someone asks me, “Why do I read?” My answer is because of books like this – a book that embraces me in its world, shattering my heart and then restoring it again. The first character we meet is Isaac Muthethe, a young medical student who was forced to flee South Africa for Botswan......more

Goodreads review by Julie on February 28, 2013

White Dog Fell from the Sky is as beautiful and profound a novel about love as any I have read. With grace and power it presents all the forms of love the heart is capable of holding: love born of compassion and of passion, love of family and of country, the blinding, feral love for one’s children,......more

Goodreads review by Lulu on April 26, 2013

If I could, I'd give this book six stars. Or seven. To set it apart from all the others. Personally, this book had all the elements I look for in a good read. It was well written and utterly lyrical in places, it had a bit of history, a bit of romance, a bit of mischief making, and it had an importa......more

Goodreads review by Yvan on June 13, 2017

This book was in some way a disappointment, as I was expecting a story turning around the apartheid or even the life of a South African refugee in Botswana. At the end, over a third of the book was dedicated to the romantic relationship between an American and British expat, a story that I found com......more

Goodreads review by Mark on August 11, 2014

There were some lovely and interesting parts of this book, mainly in the descriptions of the landscape, culture and politics of newly independent Botswana. I also enjoyed the ending very much. But it's not a book I'd recommend. I'm glad to be done with it and did think about giving up on it a third......more