Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda - Hardcover

If you enjoyed Out of Africa and West with the Night, here's another amazing woman's story of her adventurous African life. Rosamond Halsey Carr left her job as a young New York City fashion illustrator in the 1940s to join her hunter-explorer husband in the Belgian Congo; after their divorce, she decided to stay on in neighboring Rwanda as the manager of a flower plantation. For the next 50 years she lived an extraordinary life, witnessing the fall of colonialism, the loss of her friend Dian Fossey, and the relentless clashes between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Although this book includes a poignant insider's account of the events surrounding the horrific 1994 genocide, it also provides a beautiful portrait of the Rwanda that was--and still is. After being evacuated during the genocide, Carr returned to Rwanda and, at age 82, rebuilt her home from the ground up, intent on opening a home for some 100 orphaned children.

Carr's humble tenacity and bold strength animate her historical, cultural, and personal accounts. Arriving in Africa in 1949, she witnesses the traditions of the royal Tutsi dynasty, sails up the Congo to camp in pygmy villages, encounters leopards, mingles with European aristocrats, finds and loses love, and lives through Congo independence and civil war. Her passion for the country and its people makes for a life story that is both tragic and hopeful, and full of interesting details that animate the spirit of Rwanda. --Kathryn True

ROSAMOND HALSEY CARR (1912-2006), American humanitarian and author, was the last of the foreign plantation owners in Rwanda, where she also ran a children's orphanage. She was born in South Orange, New Jersey. In 1942, she married British explorer and filmmaker Kenneth Carr. The Carrs settled in the Belgian Congo in 1949, and after their divorce she settled in Mugongo, Rwanda, to run a plantation growing flowers. In 1994, she was evacuated from Mugongo by Belgian marines during the Rwandan genocide, returning when her security was no longer at risk. She founded the Imbabazi Orphanage later in 1994. She has been featured on CNN, the BBC, and Today. She died in 2006 in Gisenyi, Rwanda, and was buried at Mugongo, her flower farm in the shadow of the Virunga volcanos. The new orphanage building, where her legacy continues, is next to the farm.

ANN HOWARD HALSEY, Rosamond Carr's niece, traveled extensively to Rwanda to work with her aunt on this memoir. She lives in Downington, Pennsylvania.