Love in the Driest Season
Reviews & Articles
For years Neely Tucker was a foreign correspondent covering the world's most dangerous hot spots -- Sarajevo, Nairobi, Kinshasa. In 1997 he was based in Zimbabwe. At that time, the country was the epicenter of the AIDS crisis in Africa.
- All Things Considered, NPR February 19, 2004 (includes audio)
This is a gorgeous mix of family memoir and reportage that traverses the big issues of politics, racism and war.
- Publishers Weekly
The first time Vita Tucker cradled tiny Chipo in her arms, she knew that she had found the one. This child is a survivor, she thought, listening to the story of how the infant had been discovered, less than a day old, under a bush in Zimbabwe almost a mile from the nearest village.
- Jeanine Amber, Essence
Tucker's writing is taut and vivid as he narrates his and his wife's tumultuous quest to adopt Chipo. The stakes were enormously high: A doctor told the Tuckers, who were allowed to care for the infant temporarily, that if she were returned to the orphanage, she would almost certainly die.
- Reviewed by Adam Fifield, The Washington Post
Adopting a new way of life in the field: Journalist's story of finding abandoned child in Africa reads like a thriller
- Reviewed by Isabel Vincent, National Post (Canada)
Long-time foreign correspondent and current Washington Post reporter Neely Tucker says his book "Love in the Driest Season" is not a story about AIDS in Africa. It might, however, be just the book to put a human face on the epidemic.
- Reviewed by Thom J. Rosem, United Press International
