Love
in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir
Neely Tucker
$23.95, Hardcover
0-609-60976-9
Crown Publication
Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in
1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the
population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an
orphanage that was desperately under funded and short-staffed. One afternoon,
a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside
the city. She'd been left to die in a field on the day she was born, abandoned
in the tall brown grass that covers the highlands in Zimbabwe in the dry
season. After a near-death hospital stay, and under strict doctor's orders,
the ailing child was entrusted to the care of Tucker and Vita. Within weeks
Chipo, the girl-child whose name means gift, would come to mean
everything to them.
