The Reluctant President

The wealth came out of nowhere. I’d just left school - no money, few prospects, and I didn’t even know my own backstory - then I was rich. But why? Anna was brilliant and beautiful and gave me the guts to fly to the belly of Africa to find the answers, and she came with me. They said, it’s dangerous and she’ll stand out with her blonde hair. They were right. I lead her into terror, trapped by a genius general with a crazy plan to unseat a dictator. There were good things - we fell in love with the boy Vimbo with his bright eyes in a parchment face. But we learned real-life terror is not like a video game. Whatever your age, you won’t stop reading until the shock ending.

The wealth came out of nowhere. I’d just left school - no money, few prospects, and I didn’t even know my own backstory - then I was rich. But why? Anna was brilliant and beautiful and gave me the guts to fly to the belly of Africa to find the answers, and she came with me. They said, it’s dangerous and she’ll stand out with her blonde hair. They were right. I lead her into terror, trapped in a spider web of plots within plots within plots by a genius general with a crazy plan to overthrow a dictator. He pinned targets on our backs and there was no way out. In the background was a leader who saw himself as a lion king, who said the king rises by blood and only blood can unseat him. But whose blood? Along the way Anna fell in love with the boy Vimbo with his bright eyes in a face pulled tight like parchment; and was she half in love with the general? Real life is not like a video game; but I had survived a shitty childhood. We would survive. Or would we? Witchcraft, compassion, romance turning into a nightmare. Whatever your age, you won’t stop reading until the shock ending.

The author was born in Africa and has lived and worked in Zimbabwe, South Africa, the U.K. and Canada. He has written for newspapers, radio and television, magazines and news agencies. In Africa he covered the end of colonialism and such things as a hunt for a rogue lion and an expedition to a wild, isolated hatching ground on the KwaZulu-Mocambique border of giant leatherback turtles. He lives in Canada, not far from Toronto.