Village in Sierra Leone, West Africa
Michael
Killigan, a twentysomething Peace Corps volunteer stationed in a
village in Sierra Leone, West Africa, goes missing during a time of
turbulent political unrest. The search is on. Michael's father, a
kingpin bankruptcy lawyer in Indianapolis, uses his money and influence
to ensure all possible measures are taken by the government and related
agencies to track down his son. Meanwhile, Boone, Michael's best friend,
travels to Sierra Leone to join the quest.
White Man's Grave,
(a term coined by British colonialists to describe Sierra Leone as a
country infested with deadly malaria-carrying mosquitoes) is a
much-overlooked classic originally published in 1994, a novel I've read
multiple times. Richard Dooling has written an extraordinary work
portraying the clash of two vastly different cultures: suburban
Indianapolis, USA , and the West African bush. However, the American
author cleverly highlights the similarities between tribal magic and the
practices of our modern science and legal systems. As one
anthropologist puts it, “Villagers hire bad medicine men, or hale nyamubla, to harm an enemy with witchcraft or bad medicine the same way an American would, say, hire a lawyer to sue somebody.”
The
humor overflows when Richard Dooling details the various ways Boone
Westfall, American born and bred, goes about “trying to find your way
around Sierra Leone with a map of Indiana.” The comedy (and also the
searing drama) snaps, crackles, and propulsively pops in many other
ways. Here's a sampling:
WARLORD ON THE WARPATH
Michael
Killigan's dad aspired to become the best bankruptcy lawyer in the
country. “It would be a few years before Randall could scorch the earth
in enough Chicago bankruptcy courts to make his name synonymous with
commercial savagery in the Seventh Circuit, but he was working on it.”
Randall Killigan lives and breathes the bankruptcy code, wielding enough
knowledge to outmaneuver anyone who dares to oppose him. In his lavish
office, surrounded by his legal team, which includes several women,
Randall mutes the speakerphone when a lawyer presents a plan he's
attempting to impose on Killigan's client. Randall fumes, “You pathetic
village idiot. You can use your goddamed plan of reorganization as
insulation in your shithouse, boy. I am going to cut your fucking head
off and mount it on a pike in the middle of your front lawn,
understand?” Randall is unapologetic about his coarse language, caring
little if any of his assistants, particularly the women, take offense.
Similarly, he promptly dismisses any accusations of chauvinism and sex
discrimination from others in his firm, confident that he would easily
prevail if they ever dared to sue him in court.
ARTISTE WANNABE
Boone
Westfall studied literature and art in college. Now that he's a
graduate, how is he going to make a living? Boone thinks he'll set up
his art studio back home in his parents' basement. His father, the owner
of an insurance company, tells Boone, “No,” and that, like his three
older brothers, he can pay rent on his own apartment by working a job at
the company. Once at the insurance office, brother Pete outlines
Boone's duties in handling claims, or more accurately, denying claims.
Pete gives Boone a couple of examples: denying a homeowner's claim (a
responsible person doesn't let his house burn to the ground) and denying
a cancer patient's claim for a bone transplant (a parent or grandparent
surely had cancer, thus a preexisting condition, thus no coverage).
Ruthlessness and deception, anyone? After a year on the job, Boone, the
artist, has little reason to stick around and packs off to meet up with
his friend Michael in Paris.
WEST AFRICAN BAD MAGIC IN INDIANA
Randall
Killigan receives a mysterious package from Sierra Leone containing a
foul smelling black egg-shaped something or other the size of a small
football with a nasty red spout wrapped in ghastly rags. Thinking it
might have some connection with his missing son, Randall puts it on a
shelf in his bedroom closet next to his gun collection. Three nights
thereafter it happens: Randall wakes up in the middle of the night.
“He
saw or dreamed that he saw a bat in his own bedroom. A huge bat. He saw
it by the muddy glow from the night light in the corner, just enough
visibility to make him wonder if he was of sound mind and vision. At
first, he concluded that he was hallucinating, because the thing was so
big, with a three-or four-foot wingspan, big enough to darken the
bedroom bay windows. He almost felt his ear cup itself and grow toward
the fluttering image, straining to hear the whisper of leather wings.
Then it almost deafened him with a loud thwock! that sounded like a piece of wood hitting a sounding board. Then thwock again – terrifyingly close to him and so loud he could feel sound rushing around his face like a current.”
The
nightmare intensifies. Randall crawls across the room to his closet and
grabs a tennis racket and then turns on the ceiling lights. “The bat
shot directly overhead, so close he could see the massive span of its
fingered wings, its furry torso, its shrieking face, which he glimpsed
in one vivid instant, before blinking in terror. It had the head of a
dog, or even a small horse, with a hideous, swollen snout, and lips
bristling with warts or tumors. The eyes were large, innocent pools of
blackness, staring in wonder, almost as if the creature did not quite
believe in Randall either.”
A few more deadly swoops and the bat
disappears. Randall's wife, Marjorie, wakes only to find a terrified
Randall in his underwear holding his tennis racket. Take a look at the
below photo and you can imagine the intensity of Randall's encounter
with this bat, a bat he eventually is told by a bat expert is none other
than a giant West African Fruit Bat. However, Randall Killigan, forever
the rational lawyer, fails to make the connection between his
vision and the mysterious bundle. 
The way Randall goes about dealing with his horrific experience is one of the true highlights of the novel.
GOOBER IN THE AFRICAN BUSH
Again,
Boone proves himself the prototypical arrogant, narrow-minded Westerner
once he arrives in Sierra Leone. Any guesses on his finding his friend,
Michael Killigan, or doing anybody any good with his presence among
people whose culture and outlook on life are drastically different than
his own?
White Man's Grave speaks to many of the multiple challenges we face here in 2023. Enlighten up; read this novel.
American novelist Richard Dooling, born 1954
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