Becoming Madame Texier

In 1964, as independence was sweeping the African continent, a twenty-year-old French airline employee stepped off a plane in Douala. In the year that followed, Patrick Texier raised a leopard cub and released her into the wild. He broke the nose of a hunting client and was adopted by an elephant herd. He crashed a plane in a yam field and escaped from a Zambian jail. During this time, his parents thought he was going to work in a suit and tie. His story, narrated by the American travel writer who becomes his fourth wife, is one of adventure, mystery, and romance. There are charging lions, night flights into war zones, spear hunters, and several murders. There are poachers and armed thieves who come in the night. There is moonlight and heartbreak and a Tanzanian wedding and bunches of roses and long separations punctuated by joyful reunions. As the Texier family moves from Africa to America and then to France, each opportunity comes with a price. Parts of Becoming Madame Texier will be familiar to readers of Our House in Arusha and An Irruption of Owls, two earlier works by the same author, now combined in a single volume that spans one hundred years.