Three different women after the genocide in Rwanda. Lillian, an African American in her 50's who has been in Rwanda since 1970, Rachel, a white bartender in her 30's trying to find the father and a you do Rwandan women and the connection between them. They are all struggling to discover who they are. Wonderful novel, well worth reading.

In writing In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills, Haupt displays her deep connection with Rwanda and her respect for the Rwandan people through beautiful imagery, complex relationships, and layered characters. Reading about the atrocities of genocide and their aftermath can be heart-rending, but Haupt creates characters we can connect with and who let us see that even where there is tragedy, there can be forgiveness, and where there is forgiveness, there can be hope.

I was fortunate to read an early copy of this book through NetGalley.

After the loss of her mom, Rachel is looking for information about her father, who abandoned her at a young age. The search leads her to Rwanda, where she meets Lillian Carson. Lillian left the U.S. after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and opened a quasi-orphanage. As Rachel learns about the genocide, and the aftermath, she also discovers information about her father, and who she really is.

This was a fantastic book. It was engaging, well written and fast paced. The characters were fascinating, and really felt alive. This may be one of the best books I've read throughout the year. I look forward to reading more from this author.

In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills is the best novel I have read in a long time!
In her deeply lyrical voice, Jennifer Haupt ensnares the reader into the worlds of three very different women. The exquisitely distinct Rwanda is where they each seek their own peace.
In 1970, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr drives the strikingly complex Lillian Carlson to travel from Atlanta to Rwanda. She dreams of setting up an orphanage in the Rift valley. In this way, she’ll fulfil her wish of making the world a better place.
Many years later, Rachel Shepherd leaves New York City and her job as a bartender, to find her father in Rwanda. He’d abandoned her, during his time away from home, which coincided with the genocide in Rwanda. In finding him, she hopes to find herself too. She meets Lillian, a young woman, who is inextricably linked to her father. Rachel is about to find out just how much…
The women do not find what they expected. But they do find something even more precious, in the midst of all the traumatic secrets.
Haupt’s superbly rounded characters linger long after the last page is turned. The novel is richly textured and the research around the genocide, thorough. The vivid descriptions of the Rwandan countryside, make me want to visit as soon as possible.
A steady pace and the slow reveal of important information is expertly organised by Haupt and I felt myself to be in the hands of a master story-teller. This novel will linger for many weeks to come. It may be one of those rare books I read a second time!
Gail
Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

Sadly, this is a DNF for me. My Kindle says I'm 57% of the way through and it has been more or less the same place for about a month. In that time, I've finished other books and keep coming back to this, just not making any headway. The writing is really quite good but the story seems to be wandering around and going nowhere and I'm giving up in frustration. I no longer care where Henry is or why he is so elusive. I'm sad to abandon this - other reviewers have confirmed what I hoped when I started this book - the plot, setting, genre all appealed to be just the kind of novel I would enjoy. It just didn't gel for me.

Lillian knew what her life was about. She felt a personal responsibility to do her part in changing the world. She wanted to use her gift of her education to teach children.
Her clarity of purpose took her too Rwanda. By the time we meet her - she’s been living in Rwanda for 30 years. She is no longer teaching in a school - she takes malnourished orphan kids into her home....on her farm.
Lillian raised and educated 48 orphans....still taking more. Many of these kids - or infants - saw their mother’s get slaughtered. Lillian said Genocide was far too polite. We don’t enjoy reading that line - but she’s damn right.

Lillian not only makes the children super-power cookies packed with protein - but as her friend Henry Shepherd once said about her.....”Lillian’s enthusiasm was as good as a blood transfusion that pumped energy into his dull existence”. That’s just the type of woman that Lillian was - with ‘everyone’. Her kids blossom - got healthy - got stronger - felt better about themselves because of Lillian.

Tucker - African American- was also living in Rwanda ( Daniel Tucker) - He left UCLA nine years earlier......disappointing his father by not following in his footsteps to become a doctor.
“He could have been another young backpacker in need of a shower, stopping in Mubarak’s to get water before heading into the Virginia Mountains to track gorillas. But there was that squirming bundle he held to his chest, wrapped in a dirty pink blanket. And then, there were his meticulously squared nails rimmed with dirt-crusted cuticles: the hands of a surgeon in a war zone”.
Tucker worked hard on Lillian’s farm - building a three-room clinic where parents could from Mubaro could bring their children for free vaccinations or get a limb set.
Then - most evenings Tucker slept in a tent at the edge of the forest instead of his room in the farmhouse.

Tucker brought kids to Lillian....and stayed with her on and off. He medically cared for the orphans as well as families who live in the mountain villages between Mubaro and Uganda border.

One of the kids that Lillian raised - Nadine - went off to the University of Nairobi. Nadine loves to sing and learn more about music. There is much more you will learn about Nadine. Her story is gripping.

Rachel - had recently lost her mother, Marilee, and had a miscarriage.....(a child she named Serena and talked to daily). Rachel’s grief for the loss of her child - and her mother was putting a strain on her marriage with Mick.
Mick had his own grief- even guilt. He was at work when Rachel needed to be rushed to the hospital.
But something else was pulling at Rachel - obsessively- even understandably- given the timing of her losses- she wanted to try to resolve the mystery about her father, Henry. She had not seen him since she was 8 years of age. When she was cleaning out her mother’s things, after her death, she found a photo of a woman whose name is Lillian Carlson.

NOTE:
You’ll have to read the story to —— haha....TO GET THE STORY!!! - page turning intimate storytelling, by author Jennifer Haupt.
However, getting from step A to Z.....
Rachel stepped off the plane in Kigali... the capital and largest city of Rwanda. Tucker had his green Jeep. He met Rachel at the airport—-they played twenty questions on their drive to meet Lillian. I laughed —- trying to keep up with them: I couldn’t......BECAUSE...sometimes when you’re reading a novel, enjoying the dialogue between two people....you stop and realize WHERE YOU ARE .....
All of a sudden I had this elated feeling.....as if I were driving along in that green Jeep —a country I had never been in where the landscape was changing all around me.
Right when that feeling hit me, that same feeling hit our leading character, Rachel. She started to notice the shades of the clouds. She was taking in the scenery of the banana trees and clusters of flowers. She saw women and children wrapped in swaths of colorful fabrics. She saw some women with babies swaddled to their backs. ..... and then Rachel thought of her father because he was a photographer and she was imagining him taking photographs. THIS WAS A HAPPY MOMENT....
There are HORRIFIC MOMENTS ALSO.....
If you’re like me ... you’ll cry in one or two or three places.

For the rest of this story .... the meat of what happens.... I HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING IT YOURSELF.

......This novel was inspired by - in honor of — the genocide in Rwanda during the mid 1990’s.....at a time when we should have already learned that race, religion and culture didn’t matter.
It’s a powerful story….beautifully written… and it convincingly captures the experience that the leading characters each go through......ultimately experiencing love, courage, grief, sadness, shock, hope, injustice, justice , peace, and forgiveness.

Thank You Netgalley, Central Avenue Publishing, and the very talented author Jennifer Haupt

They say we are the sum of our experiences. And, although my preference for reading over math has never been a secret (sorry, math nerds) I entirely believe this to be true.

When reading, I find it so much easier to meaningfully connect with characters with whom I share some digits in the otherwise distinctive equations of our lives.

Oddly, though I may outwardly appear dissimilar to the characters that populate In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills, the events that shaped me are quite parallel to those that impact the protagonist of this moving Jennifer Haupt novel.

While this book is about many things, the spine of the tale is the protagonist – Rachel’s – search for her father, Henry, a man who abandoned her and her mother when Rachel was quite young.

(And I low-key love that his name is Henry, because it made me think of “What a Girl Wants” constantly #Afirthianado)

Since her father’s difficult-to-understand-especially-for-a-child disappearance, Rachel has wondered about him on numerous occasions. But as she undergoes the rigors of bedrest, preparing for the birth of her first child, the frequency of these thoughts increases exponentially.

To child Rachel, his departure confusing.

To adult Rachel, it’s incomprehensible.

Sitting in her bed, six months pregnant, she already feels such a bond to the little life kicking around inside of her.

How could her father, who she thought cared about her, walk away from everything – including her?

If Rachel had proceeded through her pregnancy and gotten her happily ever after, the thoughts about her father would have probably remained just that – fleeting notions in her brain that didn’t produce any real action.

But, when she experiences a late pregnancy miscarriage she, quite understandably, falls into deep despair.

With the loss of her pregnancy, her once-certain future is rocked and she is left with more questions than answers. While only time will provide the certainty about her future that she needs to truly heal, she can seek resolution to the unanswered questions that fill her past by searching for her long-absent father.

Unfortunately for Rachel, finding her father – who didn’t run away to another town or even another state, but instead to Rwanda – won’t be an easy feat. (But, really, nothing’s been easy for her for a while, so it’s kinda par for the course, TBH)

Though Rachel is the central protagonist of this tale, the sweeping saga is told through many perspectives, including that of Lillian, the woman her father was chasing after when he went to Rwanda in the first place (because, let’s face it ladies, men are always chasing after some woman or another).

But Lillian is not just another home wrecking bimbo (and, in truth, the home established by Rachel’s parents wasn’t really much to wreak anyways). She is, instead, an important figure from his past.

Henry, a photojournalist, first met Lillian when he was but a cub, tasked with photographing the then up-and-coming Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

As Rachel comes to discover, her father and Lillian have a history that pre-dates her and a connection that, at least it would seem, can’t be severed.

Like most sagas this story is about the characters and the gossamer threads of relationship that bind them, but it’s also about a place.

In this case, Rwanda.

You see, Henry and Lillian were trying to map out their futures, and make their marks on the lives of those less fortunate, in the early 1990s. This time period, as it would turn out, is pretty much the worst possible time to be in Rwanda.

Settling in this place at this time forces them to face with the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, a 100-day period in which an estimated 1 million Rwandans were brutally slain.

And just as the horrific events of this period have undoubtedly left their mark on those who still call Rwanda home, they leave an indelible impact on our characters and their actions.

Vastly different from many of the other books that fill my shelves, this novel was powerful, profound and provocative.

It asked hard questions, provided difficult answers and forced readers to move away from black and white and deal instead in shades of gray.

Haupt was able to produce the true emotion that this novel elicited by building rich and realistic characters that spoke to her readers.

That spoke to me.

As I cradle my toddler, born after a very difficult pregnancy – complete with my own stint of modified bedrest – and reflect on my life as a daughter who has never met her father, I felt a deep connection to Rachel and a meaningful desire to see her reach an if-not-perfect-at-least-happy resolution.

In a postcard, Rachel’s father dispenses the sage advice that you would expect from a proud parent, telling her:

“It’s the search that really matters. The adventure of living your life. You can quote me on that.”

And he’s right. It is. We are the sum of our experiences and the product of our journeys – both physical emotional.

A difficult but important read, this book will stay with me for quite some time.

I give it an enthusiastic 5 out of 5 cocktails.

In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills
by Jennifer Haupt
Reviewed by Kay Stephen
January 6, 2018

Wow! This author, Jennifer Haupt, has taken an unbelievably difficult setting -- the 1994 Rwandan Genocide -- and woven it into the novel's background, from where it slowly emerges as a central premise. Haupt introduces the reader to the genocide gently, as if she is aware that the horror it entailed could quickly overwhelm one. Indeed the novel initially focuses on the grief of a woman in New York who has lost her second unborn child. With some very clever planning Haust brings this grieving mother to Rwanda ten years after the genocide. On the surface, this woman believes she is on a quest for her long lost father, eventually she realizes she is exploring the state of her marriage and the meaning of family. But her interactions with genocide survivors as she learns the true extent of the horrors and their legacy lead her, and her new family, to search for AMAHORA – the inner peace that comes from the letting go of grief as one enters the state of grace. Kudos to Jennifer Haupt for tackling such heart rending subjects and leaving the reader with hope for humanity, and not is a state of distress and despair. Well done!

This is a gripping read, the characters are honest and I felt for the pain they endured. The theme of forgiveness and reconciliation appeals to me.

Obviously the core of the story, the Rwanda genocide, is a difficult, yet compelling story. And I was intrigued with how the author tried to bring together the various story lines. But I was disappointed with the writing, a few key characters fell flat for me.

I just finished reading In The Shadow of 10,000 Hills. It truly is one of the best novels I have read this year. The author, Jennifer Haupt, brings you deeply into the lives of the characters in her story.
This is a powerful and engrossing story that follows the life of Rachel as she navigates her way through love, grief, violence and the search for a reconnection with her father. We also get to know Lillian, who meets Rachel’s father in civil rights era Atlanta. The two women have little motive to trust each other, but in Rwanda the women find their lives intertwined in Lillian’s orphanage and come to rely in each other for support, community, and survival.
This is the story about searching for your family of origin, and ending up with a family they have chosen.

A story about a woman who goes on a quest to find her father, which leads her to Rwanda, and a new future. The Rwandan genocides play an important part in the story, and I was especially drawn to the story of the African-American character who moved there to take in and help orphans of the war.

A horrendous time in the country's history, I found parts of the story very interesting, but was unable to connect with other parts. I ended up skimming a lot of it, finding it a little too predictable and drawn out.

Whether you’re looking for a fulfilling novel, a transporting reading experience, or a great book club discussion book, choose Jennifer Haupt’s debut. In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills portrays interweaving journeys in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide with a sensitivity and universality that make the unbearable bearable. It’s the story of an American daughter’s journey to find the father who abandoned her; the saga of an orphanage before, during, and after the carnage; and the tragedy of neighbors slaughtered by neighbors followed by the uneasy miracle of survivors living together again. It’s an epic of hearts broken, scars healing, and the everyday and extraordinary choices people have to make. The characters’ individual strength and the unbelievable community will live on in your memory. Brace yourself, open the cover, and allow yourself to be transformed.

This book was appealing to me because I was so deeply moved by Phillip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We May Be Killed with Our Families and was interested in reading an exploration of grace and forgiveness after the genocide in Rwanda. Unfortunately, the several threads of this novel Did not seem to be getting me to where I expected to be and, ultimately, this novel ended up being one that did not finish.