When Sabine a former aid worker returns to Africa to find her lost niece Lilly her search will introduce her to characters that will change her life and dump her into the middle of someone else's battles. Sabine and Lilly and their friends are from all walks of life and each has a rich history of their own. A sweeping tale of family and choices.

Can you tell Aunt Sabine what you’re doing? Lily looks up defiantly, squinting. I’m giving food to hungry people, she says. And then I’m going to fly on an airplane and never come back.


Sabine Hardt is retired from aid work, now living back home in Germany when she finds out her American niece Lily has disappeared in Uganda. When she doesn’t come home as scheduled, fear gnaws at her gut. Not content to sit around waiting for others to search, in a place where there is no funding for such interest in disappearances, Sabine must return to the very place that haunts her memories. Who better than Sabine to deal with the locals, to hunt down the information and places a veteran of such aid work like her self can navigate? Her life path will join Rose’s. Rose Akula lived through the horrors of the Lord’s Resistance Army, shunned by her own people upon her return, at turns frightened, jealous, hurt when her lover Ocen vanishes, both Rose and Sabine must unite to chase the trail of their loved ones. Is it possible they were both entangled in something dangerous? Could Ocen and Lily have meant something to each other? Rose is living with the disturbing memories of her time with the LRA, left wounded physically and mentally. Her story is by far the richest and most moving. Her longing for Ocen drives her to face dangerous forces again.

This novel isn’t just about family bonds, it takes the idealism aid workers begin with and shows how it morphs, clashing with the reality of the country and it’s people. Just how do good people become just as hardened and blind to atrocities as the very natives they are there to ‘save’ and ‘help’. The victims too aren’t always welcomed back with love and compassion but met with suspicion and shamed. It’s easy to peer into other cultures and see what needs to be fixed, when you are distanced from the real horrors. It’s too easy also to walk into danger, focused so much on doing what you feel is just, and morally right. What captivated me most are the perspectives of each character, because it’s like separate worlds.

It’s a story full of heart, courage and also harsh realities. I was engaged most by Rose’s story- taken as a young girl by the LRA and the grief that lives inside for everything that happened, that she returns to darkness and horror just to try and help Ocen. I am not sure we could all be so brave. Sabine’s memories, the things she learned about herself during her time as an aid worker is crushingly moving- facing the ugliness and apathy that she hadn’t realized she was capable of is one of the truest things I’ve read about the flip said of a charitable nature, because in the end we are human beings, flawed and weak.

Publication Date: July 11, 2017

St. Martin’s Press

Thomas Dunne Books

The Atlas of Forgotten Places takes place in Uganda during the early 2000s. I knew very little about what had happened in Uganda and surrounding countries during this time and I was immediately drawn into this story and the lives of the two women that it followed. Sabine, a German woman searching for her missing niece and Rose, a Ugandan women searching for her lover were such real characters that pulled at your heartstrings. Their fears, anxieties and sufferings became so real during the book and I couldn't put it down. Jenny Williams did an excellent job explaining what was happening in Africa at that time while also diving deeply into the lives of these two women and the emotional development they went through during the book.
My only critique of this book was the ending. Rather than bringing some closure to the story I felt that Jenny left the ending very open ended and primarily up to the reader's opinion of what happened next. This frustrated me momentarily at the end but I do think it didn't take away much from how well the rest of the book was done. Definitely a good book club pick, there are lots of different aspects that could be discussed.

3.5 stars
Reading this novel through the courtesy of Net Gallery

This tale of oppression, grief, and loss has as its background the war that took place in northern Uganda. The fictional part of this novel portrays the loss felt by an aunt, a step father, and a young woman who had previously been captured by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. This was has been going on since the 1980's.

The women of this story comes from two vastly different environments. Sabine, a former aid worker living in Germany, is forced to return to both the country of Uganda, and the bad memories, as she takes it upon herself to search for her missing niece Lily. Rose, the former member of the LRA, who escaped their brutality while being a part of this LRA, finds herself thrown back into the fray because the man she loves Ocen is missing. The two women link together because of loved ones missing and this link becomes the gist of the story. How these women with the help of some others eventually find their loved ones, and the resulting trauma they suffer provides a tale that is so telling of the strife many have experienced in various nations in Africa. It also is a tale of how many people can turn their lives into something where they forget where they came from as they get caught up in the battle for what they believe is a just cause, and ultimately lose themselves to the dark nature that man often shows.

The author relates in fine detail the experiences that Rose has both been a part of and witness to during her years with the LRA. Rose's life as well as those who were forced through being kidnapped from family, is a life of killing, of living a nomadic lifestyle, of suffering brutality and becoming immune to it.

Families torn apart because of war is always a tale of sadness and one that seems to be told too many times in the lives of all those who have been lost in conflicts across this planet. The author was able to capture the look and feel of Africa so well. She was also able to make us feel that sense of loss that her characters felt.

Great read! Looking forward to reading more by this author! Highly recommend!