A Girl Named Disaster

Nhamo's mother is dead, and her father is gone. She is a virtual slave in her small African village. Before her twelfth birthday, Nhamo learns that she must marry a cruel man with three other wives and decides desperately to run away. Alone on the river, in a stolen boat, she is swept into the uncharted heart of a great lake. There, she battles drowning, starvation, and wild animals, and comes to know Africa's mystical, luminous spirits. Nancy Farmer's masterful storytelling makes this a truly spellbinding novel and readers will be cheering for Nhamo from beginning to end. A gripping adventure, equally a survival story and a spiritual voyage. Nhamo is a stunning creation while she serves as a fictional ambassador from a foreign culture, she is supremely human. An unforgettable work.

Nancy Farmer is the author of the 1995 Newbery Honor Book and best-seller The Ear, the Eye and the Arm, as well as the novels Do You Know Me and The Warm Place. For many years a resident of Zimbabwe and Mozambique, she now lives with her family in Menlo Park, California.