Three Weeks in December

Publishers Weekly

Deftly weaving the forays of two individuals, separated by a century, into the unknown heart of Africa, Schulman’s fourth novel, her first in 11 years, tracks an engineer named Jeremy, who in 1889 accepts a contract to supervise the construction of a bridge in British-controlled East Africa, and female botanist Max Tombay, who travels to modern-day Rwanda at the behest of a pharmaceutical company in search of the next blockbuster drug. Though Max treads undaunted into gorilla territory, the threat posed by child soldiers makes her wonder if her search is worth it. Jeremy feels Africa’s pull in a more personal way; he’s an outcast in his Maine town and dreads a life spent at the side of his disapproving widowed mother. Sympathetic to her two loners while accepting their faults, Schulman (A House Named Brazil) nudges her characters into their fears in order to measure their reactions, but her greatest asset is her cultural sensitivity. Finding the lonely orphan in an armed child or the playful cat within a man-eating lion, she yields her story’s mysteries slowly, with evident relish. Agent: Richard Parks, the Richard Parks Agency. (Feb.)

Library Journal

Its abundance has made Africa ripe for exploitation, but among those who arrive with less-than-honorable intentions are some who will become so enthralled with the land and its inhabitants that they cannot—will not—leave. In 1899, Maine engineer Jeremy hires on with the British to supervise the construction of a railroad through East Africa, paving the way for English settlers while carelessly displacing the indigenous people. Some 100 years later, Max, an ethnobotanist chosen by a "big pharma" corporation, travels to a gorilla research facility in Rwanda to test and return with a rare vine that could become a medical miracle. In alternating chapters, Schulman (The Cage) weaves two mesmerizing tales based on historical fact and enlivened by sympathetic, fully formed characters. Jeremy feels compelled to prove his manhood when his encampment of Indian workers is threatened by a pair of aggressive lions, while Max immerses herself in the silent world of the endangered gorilla families. VERDICT Teaching without preaching, Schulman speaks to the dichotomy between the preservationists and the destroyers of Africa's resources while treating readers to a veritable visceral cornucopia of the senses. This beautiful novel deserves wide readership.—Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib., Ft. Myers, FL

Kirkus Reviews

Two Americans have life-altering experiences in Africa a century apart in this environmentalist adventure novel from Schulman (A House Named Brazil, 2000, etc.). In December 1899, Jeremy arrives in East Africa from Maine to work as engineer in the construction of a railroad that will open Africa up to colonists. Jeremy, whose homosexuality is not spoken of but obvious, has never fit in at home, and he soon realizes the other white man at the project site will not accept him. But he falls in love with Africa. Soon he is involved in hunting two lions that have been terrorizing both the local population and his Indian laborers. His local guide and fellow hunter is Otombe, who picked up English living with missionaries as a child. In December 2000 another Maine native arrives in Rwanda. Max is a botanist hired to search out miracle beta blockers reputed to exist in certain hard-to-find vines that endangered Rwanda gorillas use medicinally. She has always been an outsider, partly because her professor father was black but mainly because she has Asperger's Syndrome. Never comfortable with human interactions, she forms an almost immediate kinship with the gorillas. Schulman shifts between Jeremy and Max's experiences. Jeremy becomes a hero for shooting one of the lions. Parting from Otombe without expressing his true feelings, he sublimates them in his sexual liaison with an African woman who reminds him of Otombe and bears him a child he takes back to Maine. Max's idyll with her new gorilla family is threatened by the growing power of a violent cult of child soldiers from the nearby Congo called the Kutu. As the marauding Kutus approach, Max goes into hiding among the gorillas with a sense of both joy and impending doom. Advocacy fiction--a little preachy and obvious but also genuinely passionate about both the cause of African wildlife and the sensory experience of Africa, which Schulman brings to tactile life.

Bruce Barcott

…Schulman creates a remarkably fresh, complex and memorable character…This is Max's book. It's a story about the senses, about perception and observation, the signals we send out into the world…By allowing us to experience life through Max's extraordinary perspective, Schulman delivers the known world in startling new sounds, colors, tastes and smells.
—The New York Times Book Review