The Headhunter's Daughter

Synopsis

From Tamar Myers, author of The Witch Doctor's Wife, comes a spellbinding tale of equatorial Africa and a child torn dangerously between two worlds.

In 1945, an infant left inadvertently to die in the jungles of the Belgian Congo is discovered by a young Bashilele tribesman on a mission to claim the head of an enemy. Recognized as human—despite her pale white skin and strange blue eyes—the baby is brought into the tribe and raised as its own. Thirteen years later, the girl—now called "Ugly Eyes"—will find herself at the center of a controversy that will rock two separate societies.

Young missionary Amanda Brown hears the incredible stories of a white girl living among the Bashilele headhunters. In the company of the local police chief, Captain Pierre Jardin, and with the witch doctor's wife, the quick-witted Cripple, along as translator, Amanda heads into the wild hoping to bring the lost girl back to "civilization." But Ugly Eyes no longer belongs in their world—and the secrets surrounding her birth and disappearance are placing them all in far graver peril than anyone ever imagined.

Publishers Weekly

Rarely have good intentions wrought more disastrous results than in this captivating Belgian Congo adventure, by turns comic and suspenseful, a worthy sequel to its predecessor, The Witch Doctor's Wife (2009). In October 1958, reports of a white girl living among the Bashilele tribe of headhunters shock young American missionary Amanda Brown; her dashing police captain suitor, Pierre Jardin; her conniving maid, Cripple; and the rest of the diamond-mining outpost of Belle Vue. Could the self-possessed teen known as "Ugly Eyes" be the same Belgian who vanished from the community as an infant 13 years earlier? In any case, what should become of her? Answering these questions proves unexpectedly complex as well as surprisingly dangerous. Myers (Butter Safe than Sorry and 17 other Pennsylvania Dutch mysteries) spins an engagingly devious yarn, but what truly elevates this effort is the warmth with which she evokes the now-vanished Congo where she spent much of her childhood. (Feb.)