Monday With Kaye: "The Girl Who Married an Eagle" by Tamar Myers (Reviewed by Kaye George)

Last week Kaye George gave us an insider’s glimpse into the world of Mormonism with her review of the mystery the Ties That Bind by Natalie R. Collins. This week “Monday With Kaye” takes us to the world of the Belgian Congo via author Tamar Myers. The mystery titled The Girl Who Married an Eagle is based on events in the author’s life.

“The Girl Who Married an Eagle” by Tamar Myers

This is a delightful book, a chance for a glimpse into the Belgian Congo, when it was still called that. The cover says this book is a mystery, although it’s a mystery to me why that label is there. Be sure

and read the Acknowledgments before diving in. There’s a family story that gives background. Next is the Preface, which puts the reader deep inside the Bashilele tribe and introduces us to Buakane, a member of the tribe.

The story starts in 1959, a year before the country gained independence from Belgium and became the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as it’s known today. Buakane’s beauty is her burden; it has attracted the attention of Chief Eagle. The chief, not a young man by the tribe’s standards, is on the lookout for his twenty-third wife. When Buakane is betrothed to him, the vivid image of her future—being buried alive with him when he dies, after her arms and legs are broken—prompts her to take rash action.

Chapter One takes us to Oxford, Ohio, where the young, impressionable, idealistic Julia Newton is bewitched by a traveling missionary who convinces her that her college degree can be used for the Lord’s work in the Belgian Congo. Even though the tribe is made up of former headhunters, who practice both polygamy and polyandry, and the school consists of young brides who have run away from their older husbands, and conditions in the mission are primitive, Julia decides, on the spot, she will go to Africa.

The American who greets her and takes her to the mission, Hank, is so good-looking he threatens her Christian goals. She tries to ignore her attraction and get on with the business of saving souls.

The history is woven into the storylines unobtrusively as Julia regrets her decision many times after she arrives. But adventures with the other missionaries, the living conditions, and the tribe, and those of Buakane, make for a great read.

Reviewed by Kaye George, author of Eine Kleine Murder for Suspense Magazine