THE WILDERNESS FAMILY

Enchanting portrait of the South African wilderness, by a woman who lived there with her game-ranger husband, three daughters, sundry animals, and a lion cub whose best friend was the family dog.

Krüger met her husband at college, married him soon after, but then had to wait a while before he was able to fulfill his dream of becoming a game ranger in Krüger National Park (South Africa’s largest game preserve). Their first post in 1980 was at Mahlangeni, in the far northwest corner of the Park on the banks of the Letaba River—an idyllic spot far from civilization and home to lions, hippos, elephants, and a leopard that patrolled their compound each night. There were no telephones or electricity, and no neighbors. Krüger, whose love for this way of life is always evident, had to send her children away to school, bringing them home for weekends—not an easy task: she had first to row across the river, then pick up their car parked on the other side (and often the hippos were obstructive or the river either too low or flooded). At Mahlangeni she reared an abandoned honey badger, the first of the many animals she raised as the family moved on to two other camps. She beguilingly records their encounters with elephants (hard to see in the dark), a resident cobra that guarded the front door of their second home, the genet cat she raised that refused to play alone, and the lion cub (named Leo) who captured their hearts. Found abandoned, Leo soon became a much-loved member of the family who played with the daughter’s teddy bears, sat on Krüuger’s lap, and became the devoted companion of Wolfie, the family dog (from whom he learned all sorts of dog lore—lessons that had to be unlearned when Leo began to live as a lion with other lions).

An idyllic account of life in paradise.