Join Maria in her bittersweet telling of a South African woman's coming of age: Of dawn patrols as a child with her Oupa (grandpa) for rogue lion in the bush veldt; of mischievous boarding school life with its insatiable prankishness; of a hitchhiking tour in cold war Europe, sweet romance, political intrigue and tragedy. Then, back again in Africa, caught in the horror of the Congolese uprising