How do people forgive each other? Really forgive, not just say that it’s okay or that it doesn’t matter? The concept of forgiveness is at the heart of In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills, by Jennifer Haupt, a beautiful novel set mostly in the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide. The novel opens in New York in 2000 with Rachel Shepherd, a young woman who very much wants to be a mother. When she loses her child, she sets off on a quest to find her the father who left her when she was a child. Her journey lands her in the middle of a story that she could never have imagined.
Henry Shepherd was a photographer who was always searching for something. If asked, I doubt he’d be able to say what it was he was looking for. He just seemed to know what he didn’t want. In the 1960s, he wanted Lillian Carlson, but they couldn’t be together after he realized that he couldn’t deal with the hatred interracial couples drew in Georgia at the time. He also knew that he couldn’t stay with the white woman he married after he left Lillian and their daughter. Working for an ad agency and putting up with a woman who could never believe that he loved her was soul-killing. When he left them, he also left Lillian, Rachel, and his wife with questions about what went wrong.
Those questions—plus her own grief over her lost daughter and her inability to communicate with her husband—drive Rachel to make a crazy choice. She scares up as many clues about her father’s past to try and find him. Instead, she finds Lillian, who is running an orphanage in Rwanda. When an invitation to visit comes, Rachel jumps on a plane and goes to talk to Lillian. She had no idea what to expect, but she certainly didn’t expect to find friends, almost an adoptive family. She also didn’t expect to land herself in the middle of the lingering dangers surrounding the truth and reconciliation trials that followed the Genocide. Her emotionally perilous journey turns into a physically perilous one.
Like Happiness, In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills is about resilience in the face of tragedies that can break a person and finding the inner strength to heal. I love the message of resilience, but also what this book has to say about blame and forgiveness. Is it possible for a child to forgive a father for walking out on her? Is it possible for a wife to forgive her husband for leaving her in a moment of need? Is it ever possible for a survivor to forgive the perpetrators of the horrific crimes of the Rwandan Genocide? This book shows us how some people might answer those questions. It is an amazing novel.
I received a free copy of this book for review consideration from the publisher via NetGalley. It will be released 1 April 2018.