A Mother's Compelling Memoir of the Life of Her Daughter

"A mother's story trying to piece together her daughter's life, from an unconventional middle English childhood to her dangerous life on one side of Sudan's civil war. Emma's passion for Africa led her to aid work in Sudan where she married a guerrilla commander and died mysteriously at the age of 29."

Emma McCune died in November 1993, in a car accident, in Nairobi. She was 29 years old and was 5 months pregnant of a boy... Almost 20 years have passed. Had she ever fathomed that her husband, Riek Machar, the father of her unborn child, would one day be the vice-president of an independent South Sudan? Where and who would Emma be now if the accident never happened? And what kind of young man would that child be today?
This book is the story of Emma's life told by her mother Maggie. Maggie begins the story well before Emma's birth, with her own birth and childhood in India...
I enjoyed reading about the lives of Maggie and Emma, while learning something more about Sudan, but it was also a somewhat heavy reading given that the precocious death of Emma is always in a corner of our mind... Even if it is a bit comforting to see that she had such a rich life and touched so many other lives. It's hard to imagine how everything that she has done can fit in only 29 years of life!