This is a memoir of war-torn colonial Africa in the 1970s, when a schoolgirl was as likely to carry a shotgun as a satchel. Alexandra Fuller was two in 1971, the year her parents abandoned their life in England & returned to what was then Rhodesia, & to the beginning of a bloody civil war. While her father was away for long stretches, fighting for Ian Smith's government, her mother worked the family farm with a passionate determination fuelled by a ferocious love for Africa. This is the story of one family's quixotic battle against the ravages of nature & the pain of bereavement, & of their unbreakable bond with the continent which defined, shaped, scarred & healed them. At times hilarious & tragic, Fuller renders her childhood in wonderful prose against the background of far larger historical events.