Love in the Driest Season: a Family Memoir

Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir by Neely Tucker Crown, February 2004 $23.95, ISBN 0-609-60976-9

Knowing how the story ends does not diminish the intensity and drama of Neely Tucker's story. As a white man from small town Mississippi, he meets and marries a black woman from Detroit. They live first in Poland, then in Zimbabwe, where he is a foreign correspondent. While in Zimbabwe, they begin volunteering at an orphanage, where they fall in love with a baby. They struggle to adopt the child, against fierce resistance by administrators who do not want the child adopted by foreigners, especially a white American.

Tucker also provides a staggering story of war, hatred, disease and corruption he covered as a correspondent half a continent away from his family in Harare, Zimbabwe. There, the child, Chipo, had become critically ill while living at the orphanage. Tucker's wife, Vira, takes Chipo to a hospital, where eventually the girl child is released solely to the Tuckers' care. The story moves swiftly and maintains its underlying tension until the satisfying conclusion.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Cox, Matthews & Associates
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group