Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda

When Rosamond Halsey Carr first arrived in Africa, she had no idea that she would spend the rest of her life there. As a young fashion illustrator living in New York City in the 1940s, she seemed the least likely candidate for such a life of adventure. But marriage to a dashing (and considerably older) hunter-explorer took her to what was then the Belgian Congo, and divorce left her determined to stay on, in neighboring Rwanda, as the manager of a flower plantation.Land of a Thousand Hills unfolds against the backdrop of Rwanda's history from the royal Tutsi dynasty to the present, in a landscape whose magic is aptly evoked through vivid descriptions of everything from elephants to volcanoes to pyrethrum fields. In the grand romantic tradition of Out of Africa, Carr's story is the epic story of a woman alone in an exotic land, struggling to survive untold hardships only to emerge with an extraordinary love for her adopted country and its people.