287 pages ; 21 cm

Includes reading group guide and a conversation with the author (pages 278-284).

"It's 1983, and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archaeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Here, seventy-year old Mary Leakey enlists Grace to sort and pack her fifty years of work and memories. Their interaction reminds Mary how she pursued her ambitions of becoming an archaeologist in the 1930s by sneaking into lectures and working on excavations. When well-known paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey commissions her to illustrate a book, she's not at all expecting to fall in love with the older married man. Mary then follows Louis to East Africa, where she falls in love for a second time, this time with Olduvai Gorge, where her work defines her as a great scientist and allows her to step out of Louis's shadow. In time, Mary and Grace learn they are more alike than they thought, which eventually leads them to the secret that connects them. They also discover a mutual deep love for animals, and when Lisa, an injured cheetah, appears at camp, Mary and Grace work together to save her. On the morning Grace is due to leave, the girl-and the cheetah- are nowhere to be found, and it becomes a race against time to rescue Grace before the African bush claims her. From the acclaimed author of The Invincible Miss Cust and The Woman at Wheel comes an adventurous, dual-timeline tale that explores the consequences of our choices, wisdom that comes with retrospection, and relationships that make us who we are, based on the extraordinary real life of Mary Leakey"-- Provided by publisher.

Leakey, Mary D. (Mary Douglas), 1913-1996 -- Fiction.

Archaeologists -- Fiction.

Women scientists -- Fiction.

Teenage girls -- Fiction.

Rescues -- Fiction.

Female friendship -- Fiction.

Africa -- Fiction.

Africa -- Fiction.

Biographical fiction.

Novels.

Online version: Haw, Penny. Follow me to Africa Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, 2025. 9781728295466 (DLC) 2024034938

9781728295459 (trade paperback)

1728295459 (trade paperback)

9781728295466 (epub)