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OWENS, Mark and Delia. Cry of the Kalahari: Seven Years in Africa?s Last Great Wilderness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984. Fourth printing. Octavo; publisher?s boards; map endpapers; illustrated with photographic plates; original dust jacket. Inscribed by both authors on September 13, 1985: ?To Joanie and Bill, It was wonderful to meet you ? Thanks so much for your love of the Kalahari and for your love of wildlife! Best Wishes, Always, Delia + Mark.? With a letter laid in discussing the couple?s deportation from Botswana and their Kalahari base camp. Bearing the bookplate of Joanie Eakright, whose partner William ?Bill? Weiss was a noted Dallas hunter and conservationist. This is Delia Owens's first published book, prior to her bestselling novel, Where the Crawdads Sing.
Condition: Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. Book is sound and complete, showing some handling wear consistent with use and age. Jacket is not price-clipped and presents well, with a touch of toning, slight edge wear, and a closed tear to the top front panel.
Note: Cry of the Kalahari recounts the Owens? seven years living and conducting zoological fieldwork in Botswana?s Central Kalahari, where they studied lions, brown hyenas, jackals, and other wildlife from an isolated base in Deception Valley. A bestseller and winner of the 1985 John Burroughs Medal, the book helped establish Mark and Delia Owens as prominent voices in popular conservation writing. This copy is particularly appealing for its warm joint inscription to identifiable conservation-minded recipients, the laid-in letter concerning the Owens' removal from Botswana and their base camp, and Joanie Eakright?s ownership mark linking the volume to the Eakright/Weiss circle of Dallas sporting and conservation interests.
Significance: The Owens? later conservation work in Zambia has made their early Kalahari memoir newly charged. Zambian authorities have reportedly sought to question Delia Owens, Mark Owens, and Christopher Owens in connection with the shooting death of an unidentified suspected poacher in North Luangwa National Park, an incident filmed during work on the ABC News Turning Point documentary ?Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story? and broadcast in 1996. Reports state that the victim was never identified and the body was not recovered; Delia Owens has denied involvement. Against that unresolved backdrop, this inscribed copy of Cry of the Kalahari?with its unusually direct reference to ?your love of the Kalahari? and a laid-in letter about the Owens? deportation from Botswana?offers a compelling artifact from the earlier, celebrated phase of a conservation career that later became the subject of international scrutiny.
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