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    Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir
    Unavailable
    Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir
    Unavailable
    Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir
    Audiobook7 hours

    Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir

    Written by Neely Tucker

    Narrated by Michael Kramer

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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 underfunded 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 of 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.

    Still an active correspondent, Tucker crisscrossed the continent, filing stories about the uprisings in the Congo, the civil war in Sierra Leone, and the postgenocidal conflict in Rwanda. He witnessed heartbreaking scenes of devastation and violence, steeling him further to take a personal role in helping anywhere he could. At home in Harare, Vita was nursing Chipo back to health. Soon she and Tucker decided to alter their lives forever-they would adopt Chipo. That decision challenged an unspoken social norm-that foreigners should never adopt Zimbabwean children.

    Raised in rural Mississippi in the sixties and seventies, Tucker was familiar with the mores associated with and dictated by race. His wife, a savvy black woman whose father escaped the Jim Crow South for a new life in the industrial North, would not be deterred in her resolve to welcome Chipo into their loving family.

    As if their situation wasn't tenuous enough, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was stirring up national fervor against foreigners, especially journalists, abroad and at home. At its peak, his antagonizing branded all foreign journalists personae non grata. For Tucker, the only full-time American correspondent in Zimbabwe, the declaration was a direct threat to his life and his wife's safety, and an ultimatum to their decision to adopt the child who had already become their only daughter.

    Against a background of war, terrorism, disease, and unbearable uncertainty about the future, Chipo's story emerges as an inspiring testament to the miracles that love-and dogged determination-can sometimes achieve. Gripping, heartbreaking, and triumphant, this family memoir will resonate throughout the ages.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateDec 9, 2003
    ISBN9781415902370
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Love in the Driest Season

    4/5

    87 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      rabck from squeakychu; A white journalist based in Zimbabwe doing stories around africa and his black wife become aware of the overwhelming volume of abandoned children, most because their parents are suffering from AIDS, and the children die usually within 3 years. Despite this, they take Chipo home for the weekend, which ends in a hospitalization and then years of paperwork trying to adopt her, which is heavily frowned on by the government. Also includes passages about Neely's growing up years in Mississippi, but interestingly doesn't include much about the wife Vita.
    • 2/5
      One can't help but admire the author's heartfelt desire to help a Zimbabwean orphan baby. But Tucker doesn't bother to explore or understand the political and historical background of his daughter's birth country. He is naturally frustrated by the poverty and corruption he witnesses, but can't understand why the black Africans he meets aren't universally thrilled that a white American is adopting one of "their" children. I wish this family all the best, but I wouldn't recommend the book.
    • 4/5
      This is such a compelling story that paucity of dialogue wasn't such a detractant, although I noticed it throughout. The story is told by a journalist, thus it reads more like the account that it is instead of a fictional story. And it's a powerful story indeed. The reader feels frustration and numbing realities along with the author. I loved this story. It's well worth the read; I listened to it on CD. The reader learns along the way, always a good thing. And the realities in Africa are chilling. This is a historical snapshot in time as well as a family memoir. I have deep respect and admiration for the author and his wife after reading this account.

      Books like this one bring us greater understanding of the world than we'll ever find in the nightly news in America or in newspapers. Stories like this one bring situations to a personal level, something we tend to forget that every situation really is. We need more stories like this, though the dangers to those who report them are overwhelming. Thanks to all brave enough to bring us stories of stark reality, and those brave enough to make a difference in even one life.
    • 5/5
      A true story about a white American journalist and his black american wife who try to adopt a Zimbabwian girl when they move to Zimbabwe. Very interesting. Also the first hand accounts of Zimbabwe and the land's dislike of Americans, the land's Aids crisis and the economic and political plummet.
    • 4/5
      a childless American couples Vita the wife is black and Neely the husband is white and thier long process to adopt a bay girl "Chipo" from Zimbabwe , a country who had never let one of theirs be allowed outside of their country , this girl was a newborn one of many who was abandoned at birth because of the massive AIDS epidemic , great descriptive despairing story , with a happy ending .
    • 5/5
      This is a beautifully written story about one couple's long and winding journey through the adoption process. I admire their tenacity and courage both in the process and in the telling of their story. This should be a must-read for any potential adoptive parents so they have some idea of the challenges facing them ahead. A plus is that Neely Tucker also reads for the audio version and does an excellent job.
    • 5/5
      Neely Tucker is a foreign correspondent in Zimbabwe, having spent his life covering foreign affairs. A white American with an african american wife, they visit the orphanages of Zimbabwe, horrified by the condition of the children they see, most of whom have been orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. The couple commits to help Chipo, a little girl who captures their heart. The book takes us through the extraordinary two year ordeal of trying to adopt Chipo and take her back to the US when civil unrest erupts and it is no longer safe to stay in Zimbabwe.This country is unable to care for it's orphaned children, and yet they're unwilling to work with families who want to help. You'll be endlessly frustrated as you read this book - cursing at an adoption system that fails to serve the real needs of children.In one particularly moving scene, Tucker meets a boy child in an orphanage and the couple decides they need to rescue him or he'll die. But by the time they arrive to get him a few days later, the child has already died. Tucker grieves the boy's death, feeling personally responsible for it, knowing if he hadn't delayed, it might've ended differenly. A moving story of benevolence. If each of us could rescue even one orphaned child in these war torn countries...
    • 5/5
      Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir in the Driest Season is told by Neely Tucker, a foreign correspondent who traversed the globe and saw more misery and death than any human should in a lifetime. Shortly after getting married, Tucker accepted a post in Zimbabwe, thinking it would be just another reporting job. Tucker, a white man from Mississippi, and his African-American wife Vita pack up their belongings, and make the track to the capital city Harare. They found the country beautiful, but ravaged by AIDS; the effects of the disease were seen everywhere. Millions of children were orphaned with one or both parents dead, orphanages were overflowing and the government was ignoring the problem.Wanting to help, Neely and Vita began volunteering at a local orphanage, with the intention of taking some kids home with them for the weekends. The first day there, they came across a tiny infant named Chipo, and instantly fell in love with the little girl. They found out that Chipo was abandoned at birth, thrown into a grass field with her umbilical cord still attached. She was found by some locals covered in blood and dirt, and eventually transported to the orphanage. Chipo was severely underweight, struggling to breath and to survive. Neely and Vita could not have kids of their own, and finding Chipo, they considered adoption to be a viable option.Together, they nurse Chipo back to health, from a sickly baby with no responses, to a happy toddler. They also discover the prejudices that exist against foreigners adopting Zimbabwean children, and battle with the system to keep their daughter.In addition to being a beautiful family memoir of love and perseverance, Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir is a masterful account of the situation in Zimbabwe, as well as other African countries, at that time. Tucker talks about the effects of AIDS on the population, the senseless civil unrests going on in various regions, the bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, the lack of order, the overly pompous leaders who care little about the people they govern, and so on.
    • 4/5
      This book chronicles the attempt of a journalist, Neely Tucker, and his wife, Vita, to adopt a child. The complication - the couple lives in Zimbabwe, where Neely is stationed, and Zimbabwe has a blanket position against allowing the adoption of its children by foreign nationals. Before this stance becomes apparent, Neely and Vita are already heavily involved in the orphan crisis in Zimbabwe. Because of the devastating disaster AIDS is in that country (in the vicinity of 543,000 children in a nation of just 11 million missing either the mother or both parents in 1998), with far ranging social and economic effects, the number of children who are without parents and who cannot be cared for by family is skyrocketing. Moved by this plight, the couple begins to volunteer at an orphanage in which the children are dying in alarming numbers (38 infants were lost in 2 years). Although Neely and Vita see workers trying, they also witness the results of an almost total lack of training, education, and funding. The couple acts as foster parents to Chipo, who is desperately in need of complete, round the clock care, as well as access to expensive medicines and vitamins. As Zimbabwe moves toward increasing political turmoil, the Tuckers work with unbelievable determination and resilience in order to adopt the child they have fallen in love with.Quote: "What does she want with that little white boy?" Vita's mother, Ida Helen, asked Kathie, Vita's youngest sister. "Is the girl just lonely?" "Mama," Kathie sighed, "black people do not move to Poland because they're lonely."This is a book that for the most part really held my interest. The portion devoted to Vita and Neely's life in Zimbabwe, the struggle to be seen as fit parents for Chipo, even if they are are citizens of the United States was very interesting and hard to put down. A good deal of information is also given about both the AIDS crisis in Africa, as well as the political situation in the different countries where Neely travels. While some background information is good, the times when the narrative strays from the family's story itself detract from the enjoyability of the book as a whole. Overall, however, a very worthwhile read.
    • 4/5
      Neely Tucker grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi, a white product of a deeply racist society. He turned to journalism as his escape from the poverty and the racism. As a journalist in Detroit, he spent a lot of time with his neighbor,, a black woman named Vita. After going to his first overseas assignment, he discovered that Vita was the love of his life, and they were married.After time in Eastern Europe, he was sent to Zimbabwe. He and Vita had heard that AIDS was having a horrific impact there, but it took time to sink in.that a whole generation was dying and leaving orphans. Neely and Vita began working in orphanages, trying to provide a bit of help to a system with too few people to take care of the increasing number of orphans with totally inadequate funds and supplies.When Neely and Vita see baby Chipo, they fall in love. Chipo had already come close to death on more than one occasion. When they take her home, they have to fight to keep her breathing as she suffered from pneumonia. More than once an hour she had to be fed and her breathing tubes cleared, and part of this time Neely was away reporting on the embassy bombing in Nairobi. The Tuckers want to adopt Chipo, and this is the story of how they overcame an impossible bureaucracy to make it happen.Neely Tucker saw a lot of death as a reporter in areas of the world where conflict and disease were rampant. He tells enough of the story to make the reader feel some of the horrors he has seen. So the book is difficult to read. It is, however, a compelling story, and in the end, it shows that people can change for the better, as illustrated by Neely's parents, who for so long accepted the racism of their society, only to be won over by their son's black wife and daughter. The lessons of the book, then, are that life is hard... unbearably so, in some parts of the world. Yet even among the worst, Neely Tucker finds heroes.The book is written with clarity and honesty, sometimes brutally so. Read it and weep, but read it.
    • 5/5
      The kind of book that changes your life! A well-written, moving memoir about an interracial American couple who adopt a beatiful, sickly girl from Zimbabwe and the struggles the family overcomes.