The Girl Who Married an Eagle: A Mystery
No blood is shed, except in a thwarted hyena attack, in the final book in Myers&#x2019; Belgian Congo series, although the possibility of life-threatening danger is ever present. In the months before the Congo gains its independence from Belgium in 1959, young Buakane is pledged to become the twenty-third wife of powerful Chief Eagle, nearly three decades her senior. But the girl, frightened especially by the prospect of being buried alive, as custom dictates, when her husband dies, flees before the ceremony and is rescued by American missionaries who run a boarding school for such runaway child brides. Here Julia Newton, fresh from college in Ohio, finds that both her kind heart and fresh tongue cause problems, distressing particularly the crusty missionary nurse. Former series protagonist Amanda Brown is absent, visiting her Belgian police officer husband across the river, but she&#x2019;s unlikely to be missed in this romp reminiscent of the novels of Alexander McCall Smith and based on Myers&#x2019; own childhood experiences. --Michele Leber