Perceptive, intelligent, stubborn and wilful, Clara is the only daughter of a Midlands' manufacturer, still bereaved by the death of her mother, and jilted by a local aristocrat. When she meets a visiting missionary, Robert Haslam, she falls in love. Haslam is an innately good man, unlike many of his Christian brethren. After much wrangling with her father, Clara marries Robert and agrees to join him in Africa. Her journey out is both terrible and awe-inspiring, and once she arrives at the village where Robert lives, she finds an enclave of huts, dust and flies. Slowly, Clara finds out more about Robert, that he has been married before, and more disturbingly, that the Church must come first. When tribal warfare overspills into the camp, Clara is rescued by the Cavalry, and finds herself embarking on a painful and heart-wrenching discovery.

An excellent tale of high romance, war, adventure and the complexities of human relationships FINANCIAL TIMES Look forward to sleepless nights with this book clamped in your sweaty palms GUARDIAN Jeal's narrative is exciting and exact... If you like your historical fiction told straight up, then you would be hard pressed to find a better novel than this. THE TIMES Gripping... utterly authentic... only the most determinedly cynical will fail to find it moving and convincing. SCOTSMAN

Tim Jeal is a respected biographer and novelist. His lives of David Livingstone and Lord Baden-Powell are considered definitive works, and his two earlier historical novels were widely praised. He was also awarded the Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize for his third novel, Cushing's Crusade. He lives in London with his wife and three children.