A walloping good yarn.
To date, Chris Bohjalian has nearly two dozen published novels to his credit. All those many years at his keyboard have paid off - The Lioness is a masterfully constructed tale, one that will keep any reader eagerly turning the pages to see what happens next and next.
The American author frames his tale thusly: it's 1964 and Hollywood movie star Katie Barstow organizes something special for her honeymoon: an all expenses paid African safari for not only her and her new husband David Hill but also seven other women and men from Tinseltown. Once in the Serengeti in Northern Tanzania, after some days traveling to observe and photo wildlife, armed Russians surround their camp, murder three African guides, order Katie and her group into a pair of Land Rovers and drive them all away - dream vacation turned kidnapping nightmare.
In the spirit of a Hollywood movie trailer, here's a number of Lioness highlights -
FORESHADOWING IN SPADES
We're given a taste of what's to come in the novel's Prologue delivered by one of the American participants. “Oh, I can't speak for the dead. And I won't speak for the missing. I can only tell you what I think happened....The mantra for most of us? Just stay alive. See if, somehow, we might see the sun rising one more time."
MEDIA FLASH
The thirty-one chapters begin with a clip from the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, Movie Star Confidential, The LA Times providing a snip from the glamorous lives of these LA luminaries. The media gossip and chitchat serve as stark contrast to the suffering, pain and tragedy under the African sun.
THE PLAYERS PLUS ONE
Each chapter focuses on one of the nine Americans and an African porter. Chris Bohjalian folds in the backstory of each person and in this way we get to know and care about everyone undergoing the ordeal, their personality, their feelings and emotions, their pains and fears. And then, supremely effective, as the drama unfolds, the author cycles back and gives each character (if they're still alive, that is) a second chapter and then a third.
SUPPORTING CAST
Katie hires Charles Patton, owner of Charles Patton Safari Adventures, and his staff of more than a dozen Africans (all Black) to guide and support them on their trek across the Serengeti. Patton (no relation to the famous military leader as he's quick to point out) is an old school Brit type and seasoned hunter who knew Hemingway. The inclusion of Charles Patton adds much color and deepens the drama.
WILDLIFE
The African setting counts for so much. Mr. Bohjalian participated in his own safari and his firsthand experience shows. His writing about the flora and fauna is vivid and detailed. Not only did I come to know Katie and the others but I actually had the real sense I was right there, sharing the same land and sky with the lions, leopards, elephants, wildebeest, zebras, rhinos, hippos, baboons, gazelles, giraffes, hyenas, jackals, antelopes, vultures and snakes.
KATIE BARSTOW
Raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan by parents who were themselves stars on Broadway, Katie escaped to Hollywood to be at least three time zones away from her despicable parents, especially loathsome mom, a half-crazy, overly possessive dipstick with a strong sadistic streak. But sweet, charming, charismatic Katie became a 1960s film star, a good actress “in part because of the scars and wounds from her childhood.” Perhaps not surprising, Katie never could get seriously romantic with another actor; rather, she married an owner of a small, not-so-successful LA art gallery.
DAVID HILL
Katie's husband David also grew up on the Upper West Side and knew Katie ever since she was a little girl, back before she changed her name from Katie Stepanov. David struggles financially with his art gallery and knows he can't borrow money from the bank and “his parents certainly weren't going to lend him the money: whatever the hell his father had done with the OSS and did now with the CIA – personnel, really? - it wasn't lucrative.” Hey, David, what exactly does your father do with the CIA? David was never told and remains clueless.
BILLY STEPANOV
Katie's brother Billy was mom's prime victim, frequently locking little Billy in a pitch dark closet of their Manhattan apartment as punishment for disobeying her orders. Is it any surprise Billy grew up to be a successful LA therapist, a man forever capable of identifying with his patient's psychic traumas. Billy brings along pregnant wife Margie on Katie's safari although Billy hates flying. “When he self-diagnosed his own demons, he attributed his fear of flying to that closet. It wasn't really about being five miles off the ground, it wasn't the idea of traveling 550 miles an hour; it was about being trapped in a metal tube from which there was not escape. It was about claustrophobia.”
CARMEN TEDESCO
Katie's good friend, Carmen is also a Hollywood star actress, not quite the celebrity of Katie but she's up there. Carmen is small in stature but her survival instinct and character are rock solid. When the Russians start shooting and give the command that their captives lie face down in the dirt, Carmen is appalled at her screenwriter husband's behavior. “Carmen had no desire to shoot Felix, but she couldn't believe that her husband was crying. She was shocked that he had thrown up in the dirt beside him. Beside her.” Carmen gives thanks she didn't take Felix's name and vows to divorce him when they return to California.
TERRANCE DUTTON
Katie's friend, a big, muscular Black Hollywood actor, Terrance surprises one of the porters by insisting he call him not bwana or Mr. Dutton but Terrance. And to think Terrance survived all the many racial humiliations growing up in Tennessee and death threats as an actor only to be held at gunpoint by whites in Africa. Irony, anyone? Read the chapters with Terrance Dutton with care for the many insights on American race, class and society.
KICKER
There's more, much more - love and death, Eros and Thanatos in full bloom. And I didn't even mention Katie's publicist Reggie Stout or her agent Peter Merrick or a number of other men playing their part in this African high drama. The Lioness is a thriller you'll surely want to read this summer. Moving, unforgettable.
American author Chris Bohjanlian, born 1962
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