The Wilderness Family: At Home With Africa's Wildlife

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Longtime animal lover Kobie Krüger got a little more than she bargained for when she married a game warden and moved deep into some of South Africa's wildest country.

In The Wilderness Family, Krüger recounts adventures and misadventures with the curious menagerie that shared her turf--and sometimes her roof--in the remote Mahlangeni section of Kruger National Park, which lies in the river-laced country between South Africa and Mozambique. Among the animals she encounters in the pages of her memoir are enterprising hyenas who, for whatever reason, pilfer cookware and blankets; a python that crept into bed with the Krügers on their first night in Mahlangeni; Egyptian goslings raised by a proud but broad-minded bantam hen; and the occasional ill-tempered elephant. Most affecting of all her encounters, however, is her long association with an orphaned lion cub named Leo, whom she and her family raised into adulthood. Leo, whose pastimes included alarming unsuspecting visitors and staring at passing birds in the sky, takes center stage for much of this book, and Krüger's loving portrait is a warm rejoinder to Joy Adamson's Born Free.

Readers who come to this memorable study of life in the African outback will be duly entertained, and those who are planning a trip there will learn a thing or two about how to behave around genets, cobras, rhinos--and, yes, lions. --Gregory McNamee