Click below for information about each book in the series with book club discussion questions.

Click on the map to see Jade's maps from all four books.

PEOPLE AND PLACES:
ABOUT THE PLACES

The period from the end of World War I through the roaring twenties was a time when many people felt very sophisticated and modern in a very primitive world. Dangers were surmountable if you had the wit and courage to tackle them. It's a time when old cultures and the modern world first collided. Amelia Earhart was learning to fly, Hemingway trotted around the globe, and Martin and Osa Johnson filmed cannibals. It was a time of the lost generation, disillusioned soldiers returning from the Great War. Prohibition and loose morals slammed their way into American culture.

A GLIMPSE OF WORLD WAR I

For more information on women ambulance drivers, start with "Gentlemen Volunteers" by Arlen J. Hansen. There is a chapter devoted to women drivers and tremendous resources listed in the back of the book. An excellent fictionalized version is "Not So Quiet . . ." a novel by Helen Zenna Smith. This novel, printed shortly after WW I, was banned in some areas for being too controversial.

COLONIAL AFRICA - THE BRITISH PROTECTORATE / KENYA

Any of the books that Jade found or looked to find in Gil Worthy’s library will also give insight into colonial Africa. Other excellent and more accessible resources include any of Elspeth Huxley’s books such as "The Flame Trees of Thika" and "The Mottled Lizard" as well as books by Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham. Osa and Martin Johnson have several books on life in 1920’s Africa including the more famous "Four Years In Paradise" and "I Married Adventure". Information on Osa and Martin is also available at the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum which has an excellent website (www.safarimuseum.com) and an even more magnificent research library in the museum in Chanute, Kansas.
 
For more information on women ambulance drivers, start with "Gentlemen Volunteers" by Arlen J. Hansen. There is a chapter devoted to women drivers and tremendous resources listed in the back of the book. An excellent fictionalized version is "Not So Quiet . . ." a novel by Helen Zenna Smith. This novel, printed shortly after WW I, was banned in some areas for being too controversial.

As of July 1920, the British Protectorate officially became The Kenya Colony or "Kenya".

MOROCCO

The Maghreb, (land of the west) -- home to the Berbers, a people of an ancient past, who now either roam as nomads to the far south (the Sus) or eke out a living in the mountains, while the Arab peoples live in the cities. In Jade’s time, Morocco is under French protection, while being ruled by an Arab Sultan.

Many excellent resources exist on historical Morocco, most from the American or European perspective, but since that was Jade’s viewpoint, they served their purpose. Budgett Meakin provides us with three accounts: The Land of the Moors (1901), The Moors (1902), and Life in Morocco (1905). Other sources include: “Morocco the Bizarre or Life in the Sunset Land” by George Edmund Holt, “In Morocco” by novelist Edith Wharton, “Old Morocco and the Forbidden Atlas” by C. E. Andrews, “Ritual and Belief In Morocco” by Edward Westermarck, and several National Geographic articles from the time period are well worth looking up.

NAIROBI

While Nairobi started out as a temporary camp and supply station on the Uganda railroad, it quickly became the Colony’s capital city. Built on swampy ground along the Nairobi River, it housed a large population of Indian shopkeepers and craftsmen as well as British colonists. Most of the colonists preferred to live in the city’s northern suburbs: Parklands and Muthaiga estates. The city boasted electricity early on, generating it from running water – that is, unless something large got into the flume and “stopped it up.” Nairobi also had early telephone and intracity telegraph systems. The two newspapers: The Leader of British East Africa and The East African Standard ran both as dailies and as weeklies.

ABOUT THE CHARACTERS: PEOPLE