Gorillas in the Mist - Softcover

Mowat, Farley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0771064683 ISBN 13: 9780771064685

Publisher: Emblem Editions, 2009

Synopsis

Originally titled Virunga, this is the story of Dian Fossey, the mountain gorillas’ greatest champion and martyr. Based on Fossey’s personal papers and on interviews with her colleagues, friends, and enemies, Gorillas in the Mist reveals one woman’s passion for life — and the creatures who share it with us.

About this title

About the Author

Farley Mowat was born in Belleville, Ontario, in 1921. He served in the Second World War from 1940 until 1945, and began writing for his living in 1949 after spending two years in the Arctic. Since 1949 he has lived in or visited almost every part of Canada and many other lands, including the distant regions of Siberia. He is the bestselling author of forty-seven books, which have been published in more than twenty languages in more than sixty countries.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

— 1 —
 
Neither destiny nor fate took me to Africa. Nor was it romance. I had a deep wish to see and live with wild animals in a world that hadn't yet been completely changed by humans. I guess I really wanted to go backward in time. From my childhood I believed that was what going to Africa would be, but by 1963, when I was first able to make a trip there, it was not that way anymore. There were only a few places other than the deserts and the swamps that hadn't been overrun by peo ple. Almost at the end of my trip I found the place I had been looking for.
 
Right in the heart of central Africa, so high up that you shiver more than you sweat, are great, old volcanoes towering up almost fifteen thousand feet, and nearly covered with rich, green rain forest – the Virungas.
 
Going to Africa was one of many dreams that filled Dian Fossey's lonely childhood. Her father, George Fossey, son of an English immigrant, was a big, affable, outdoorsy type who loved his little daughter but hated his impoverished life as an insurance agent in San Francisco. In consequence he drank too much, which got him into trouble with the law and finally brought on a divorce that took him out of Dian's life in 1938 when she was six. A year later her mother, Kitty, married Richard Price, an ambitious, hard-driving building contractor. In the beginning, George Fossey tried to keep in touch with Dian, sending her pictures of himself in his navy uniform during the war; but even his name was taboo in the Price household and eventually he drifted out of sight.
 
Although she dutifully called him Daddy, Dian's stepfather never adopted her. Richard Price was a stern traditionalist who believed that children should be properly disciplined. Until she was ten, Dian was not even permitted to take her evening meal with Richard and Kitty, but ate in the kitchen with the housekeeper. "I had always been brought up to think that children dined with adults when they were becoming adults," Price offered in justification.
 
Like many lonely children Dian loved animals and took comfort from their undemanding acceptance of her; yet she was not permitted any pets of her own except for a goldfish, upon which she lavished the affection that had few other outlets. The death of the fish left her desolate.
 
I cried for a week when I found him floating belly up in the bowl in my room. My parents thought it was good riddance, so I never got another. A friend at school offered me a hamster, but they considered it dirty, so that was out.

About this edition

• Publisher: Emblem Editions
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0771064683
• ISBN 13: 9780771064685
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 504