Leaving before the rains come

"Looking to rebuild after a painful divorce, Alexandra Fuller turns to her African past for clues to living a life fully and without fear. A child of the Rhodesian wars and daughter of deeply complicated parents, Alexandra Fuller is no stranger to pain. But the disintegration of her own marriage leaves her shattered. Looking to pick up the pieces of her life, she confronts the tough questions about her past, about the American man she married, and the family she left behind in Africa. This memoir begins with the dreadful first years of the American financial crisis when Fuller's delicate balance--between American pragmatism and African fatalism, the linchpin of her unorthodox marriage--irrevocably fails. Recalling her unusual courtship in Zambia--elephant attacks on the first date, sick with malaria on the wedding day--Fuller struggles to understand her younger self as she overcomes her current misfortunes. Fuller soon realizes that what is missing from her life is something that was always there: the brash and uncompromising ways of her father, the man who warned his daughter that "the problem with most people is that they want to be alive for as long as possible without having any idea whatsoever how to live." Fuller's father--"Tim Fuller of No Fixed Abode" as he first introduced himself to his future wife--was a man who regretted nothing and wanted less, even after fighting harder and losing more than most men could bear. Fuller threads panoramic vistas with her deepest revelations as a fully grown woman and mother. After spending a lifetime waiting for someone to show up and save her--she discovered that, in the end, we all simply have to save ourselves. Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969. In 1972, she moved with her family to a farm in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) southern Africa, leaving for America in her mid-20s. In 1994, she moved to Wyoming. She is the author of Don't let's go to the dogs tonight: an African childhood, Scribbling the cat: travels with an African soldier, and Cocktail hour under the tree of forgetfulness"--Provided by publisher.