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Now is the Time for Running, but not just to play soccer. Deo must help his disabled older brother escape guaranteed death in Zimbabwe and stay alive long enough to find sanctuary in South Africa. Wild animals, deceitful travel companions, and city gangs all pose unpredictable dangers to the young teen.
Author Michael Williams lives and teaches in South Africa, where he's seen first-hand the prejudice of city folk against the flood of refugees caused by political instability, as well as dedicated street-soccer coaches who turn around lives today.
Named to the ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults 2012 list, this novel examines life and love in the South Africa shantytowns where beliefs from the past collide with the modern reality of the AIDS virus.
Brought from unremarkable Ohio to exotic Liberia by his father's work in the 1980s, Linus decides to reinvent himself as a cool guy. Reading about Africa, he learns that the black mamba snake is secretive and rare. Yet the first thing Linus sees when the plane lands in Africa is a black mamba!
The U.S. Embassy residence area is called Mamba Point, but no one ever sees black mambas there...except Linus. An old man in the neighborhood tells him about connections with spirit animals - is the venomous snake truly his 'kaseng'?
(For all books, review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.)
I dream of visiting Africa. Maybe reading more books like these would be a good, inexpensive way to do it. One of the most interesting books I have read about Africa was Graveyard for Dreamers. It is a memoir.
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