The Witch Doctor's Wife

by Tamar Myers

Book Overview

"A lush novel, rich with tension and intricately woven, believable characters. Myers clearly loves the Congo--and you will love this book. I did!"--Mary Alice Monroe, bestselling author of Last Light... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061727830
• Release Date: October 2009
• Publisher: Avon
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.7" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

African Life

This was a really quick read. Tamar Myers knows how to keep the reader hooked from the beginning. I could not put this book down at all. I read it even in traffic. It gave you a feel of Africa and being part of the culture there. The author also shared some interesting information that went within the chapters. Now I wish I could go to Africa to see what it is like, but I have a good feeling that I went there already in this book. This was a really good read!

Highly recomment this book! You won't be disappointed.

Loved this book! Well for one I love reading about different countries and cultures. The setting is in the Belgian Congo. The characters are Amanda, who is a missionary who has come to take the place of the missionary's who are running the missionary guest house. She finds herself in culture shock, so many differences between the American and the Belgians. The witch doctor who goes by the name of Their Death. He has 2 wives, Cripple and Second Wife. Their Deaths son, Baby Boy is sucking on a rock. The rock is a diamond. The diamond mine in the Belgian is owned by the Consortium and anyone caught with a diamond faces stiff fines and the whip. Their Death cannot smuggle the diamond for fear of getting caught so he decides he will confront his boss, the Postmaster to sell him the diamond. Many events happen after this meeting that makes you want to keep reading to find out what happens! The end was unexpected and surprising. The only part that I would say didn't need to be in the book was about the Nigerian man but maybe it was to make a point on the seriousness of the diamonds. I give this one 5 stars because it is an excellent read!

Bravo!

The Witch Doctor's Wife arrived in my hands, because it was put there by my good wife. Thereafter, I could not put it down. This comes from a busy chap that does not normally have time for literature outside of audiobooks consumed on the road. Tamar Myers uses her personal experiences growing up in the Belgian Congo to open for us a window into a unique and fascinating culture. The interactions between the indigenous people and the Europeans are also at times hilarious and had me laughing out loud. As other reviewers have mentioned, I also noticed a number of characters that did not seem to fit into the main story line, but did not find this a distraction from the pleasures of the book. I also suspect it will tie in with the next in what appears to be a series (I certainly hope there will be a follow-on). I enjoyed the uniqueness and authenticity of the book so much that I have purchased another copy to put in the hands of a good friend. I was rather surprised to find The Witch Doctor's Wife in the Mystery section.

Beautiful!

In 1958, South Carolinian Amanda Brown travels to the Belgian Congo to oversee a missionary guest house the town of Belle Vue. Against the backdrop of the mounting forces for independence and the mining company's race to take as many profits as possible in the meantime, the relationship of the local witch doctor, Their Death, and his two wives takes the reader into a more interpersonal struggle, within the family and with other tribes. The discovery of a huge diamond leads to a path which will draw together various residents in a web of deals that sets one against another and draws together others once at odds. Greed from several sides, corporate and individual, sets off a dangerous confluence of events and interactions that might lead to murder itself. As the movement for independence heats up, Amanda and the witch doctor's family will be tested in ways they never would have imagined possible. In THE WITCH DOCTOR'S WIFE, Tamar Myers, an author born and raised in the Belgian Congo, takes the reader straight into the heart of that country through the art of storytelling. Her characters and their interrelationships drive the story forward, drawing together various stands of seemingly unconnected story lines, at least at first, from the mysterious Nigerian's plight to a local store owner. THE WITCH DOCTOR'S WIFE gives a fascinating look into this moment in time and this culture. Characters native to the area provide amusing and insightful perspectives on the strangeness of the western culture. The oddness and humor reaches Western readers in a manner that allows a look at oneself in a new way, challenging things taken as normal as perhaps not so normal. Instead of pitting one culture against another, Tamar Myers has a more generous vision that recognizes the differences of cultures with humor and humanity. She develops her characters and their relationships, drawing the reader into the layers of the community to the depth and undercurrents in their interactions. As the story develops, this reader found herself pulled back to the community, and anxiously awaiting the moment to pick up the book again to return to the richness of the fictional world. The growth of the main characters throughout the story gives a depth to the story that leaves one feeling the transformation within the human heart, the timeless motivations that haunt humanity, and the twist of circumstance or miracle. Tamar Myers interweaves the mystery itself so intimately within the world she creates that the mystery of the diamond develops naturally rather than the typical mystery scenario of a murder with a trail through several red herrings to be discounted before the final mystery is solved. For this reason THE WITCH DOCTOR'S WIFE will appeal to both fiction and mystery lovers. I love it all the more for its richness in storytelling and the lush, poetic tenor of the language! The unfolding of the mystery itself impresses all the more because it develops from the st

Unusual and Unusually Interesting [4.5 stars]

Tamar Myers' The Witch Doctor's Wife is set in the Belgian Congo in 1958. There are increasing demands at this time for Congolese independence from Belgian rule. But before they are compelled to cede power to the natives, the Belgians mean to extract as much profit as possible from the country's diamond mines. The town of Belle Vue, situated near a waterfall in the Kasai River, is largely under the authority of the mining consortium that owns the mineral rights to much of the surrounding area. The social divide between the white colonialists and the black natives is enormous, almost unbridgeable, and most of the Belgians in the country are racist and dictatorial in their relationships with the natives. Against this backdrop Myers introduces a handful of characters: a witch doctor/post office groundskeeper and his two wives, the witch doctor's Belgian boss, a young American missionary, a Portuguese store owner. There is also a mysterious Nigerian who flies into the country with the missionary and then makes himself scarce for reasons that are not at once divulged. Myers explores what happens to this cast when one of them discovers an impossibly large gem, a diamond larger than anything that's ever been found in the area. It's worth a fortune, but profiting from it, given the iron grip of the Consortium on the country's resources, may not be possible. The Witch Doctor's Wife is an unusual and unusually interesting read. It offers fascinating information about the culture of the Belgian Congo--the author was born and raised there--both within the story proper and in the explanatory paragraphs with which each chapter opens. The book defies the reader's expectations, in part because some of the story's threads end quite abruptly. One could argue that this is bad storytelling: to an extent it feels like the author is cheating, cutting out complications with, say, a death that comes out of nowhere. But I didn't feel cheated myself, just intrigued by the author's strange decisions. The one thing I did have trouble with is a decision made by one of the characters, a brave bit of selflessness that motivates much of what happens at the end of the book. But the decision that character made was an irrational one, I think, the sacrifice offered unnecessary under the circumstances (as far as I can see), so that to my mind much of the book's plot rests on an unacceptable premise. (This complaint is very vague I understand, but I don't want to give anything away.) Despite this one difficulty, I enjoyed this book very much, and I highly recommend it. -- Debra Hamel