“Saving the White Lions: One Woman’s Battle for Africa’s Most Sacred Animal” was a difficult book to get through. In fact I struggled so with the first seven chapters I had to skip to one in the middle and finish with the last one simply to get this review in. I was disappointed that the “battle for Africa’s most sacred animal” really was about ONE animal and the woman
who made it her life’s work to return this animal to freedom. The writer felt it to be her calling from past lives and spirit winged lions standing next to her to take on this task.
The chapter titled “Suspense in Santa Fe” involved the on-again, off-again financial donation from the writer’s Godmother to donate enough money to send this single lion, or Sacred One as she is known, back to the origins of her ancestral kingdom, though from what I was able to gather from the few chapters I made it through I am not even sure if the lioness was actually born in the wild. No real suspense here… obviously the money came through or we wouldn’t have even this much of a book to work through!
The lioness is eventually released into the wild, which is seemingly the point of the story, however the labors involved in reading this 391 page book made me more glad to be done with the book than to relish the thought of one more lion in the bush, white lion or not. All I can think of is how similar this story is to “Born Free”, both the books and the movie relating the story of Elsa and her cubs by Joy and George Adamson (something from my childhood over 40 years ago that I still remember fondly to this day).
My recommendation would be to skip Linda Tucker’s story and read the Adamson stories instead; unless of course you too believe in flying lions and past lives.
Disclosure: A free copy of this book was given to the volunteer with the expectation that an honest review would be written about it.
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Jeremy
Says:September 12th, 2013 at 5:05 am
Thank you! Finally a credible and authentic review of this book. I thought I was on a different planet when I read the oddly sycophantic reviews by other readers. I was irritated by the self-aggrandizing tone throughout, as well as the gratuitous foul language, the banal references to domestic meals (who cares why she eats calamari?) and the naff descriptions of farmers’ rugby-thighs in short pants. I read the author’s first book (is it even the same author?) and found it balanced and informative, perhaps, in retrospect, because it is mostly a collation of other people’s opinions. But at least, in the first book, the author humbly credits those whose works she had referenced. The second book is an epic of one person’s sorry-self lament and bizarrely persistent esoteric self-praise.