Delia And Mark Owens In Africa

Book excerpt: Delia Owens, author of the best-selling Where the Crawdads Sing, began her career writing riveting real-life adventure and wildlife tales with her husband, Mark Owens. Collected in a single volume for the first time, these three odysseys show how the Owenses’ “ingenuity, courage, and accomplishment are beyond exaggeration.” (People) Carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, two young Americans, Delia and Mark Owens, caught a plane to Africa, bought a third-hand Land Rover, and drove deep into the Kalahari Desert. In this vast wilderness they met animals that had never seen humans before, and leopards, giraffes, and brown hyenas were regular visitors to their camp, all chronicled in Cry of the Kalahari. But the Kalahari is not Eden, and Mark and Delia were continually threatened by wildfires, drought, violent storms, and sometimes by the animals they studied and loved. They set off on another African odyssey in search of a new wilderness in The Eye of the Elephant. They land in a remote valley of Zambia, where the hippos swam in the river just below their tents, lions stalked the bush, and elephants wandered into camp to eat marula fruits. The peace, though, was soon shattered with gunfire, and Delia and Mark were inexorably drawn into a high-stakes struggle to save the wildlife. With Secrets of the Savanna, Delia and Mark tell the dramatic story of their last years in Africa, fighting to save elephants, villagers, and—in the end—themselves. The award-winning zoologists and pioneering conservationists describe their work in the remote and ruggedly beautiful Luangwa Valley, in northeastern Zambia.