Held to near-impossible standards, teenage Kambili and her older brother try to avoid all the land mines set by their exacting father to avoid severe punishment. Unsurprisingly, their mother has the same challenge. Set in Nigeria, this book is probably a story many would relate to, no matter where they grew up. Tyrranical father, adored by the world, and a house full of secrets. Well, Kambili's mom also has secrets, as it turns out.
This tale of swashbuckling derring-do sounds like it's straight out of a little adventurer's imagination, and although Alexandre Dumas made the most of his father's heroics in the writing of his famous books, his dad was the real McCoy. Born in Saint-Domingue 1762, his predicted trajectory would typically have been to be worked to death on a sugar plantation, as was the norm in that time, in that place. However, even with the world pitted against his race, he excelled so far as to be unignorable. At a time when chaos reigned, he managed to navigate the swirling political tides and survive with his head high as a general in the French army. And when the odds were stacked against him and his army, he somehow became a real-life hero, creating not only an example for his men on the battlefield, but in life.
This book starts at the beginning and takes you through every aspect of how maps were originally made, conjured, faked, battled over--well, you get the point. Along the way there are a lot of human behavior nuggets too, and you realize just how complicated this whole map-making biz is. It's a fun and interesting dive into how we figured out how to get around without the stars as our guide.
