Mimosa Road

“A page-turner, a history lesson, and a pleasure to read. Two remarkable women, an African native and a privileged American ex-pat, become friends as they find different ways to resist the cruel regime of Mobutu. Mimosa Road is both a lyrical journey into an African village of the 1970s and an edge-of-your seat story about life under a ruthless dictator.” --  Nancy Kilgore, award-winning author of Bitter Magic

"With Mimosa Road, Ruth Linnea Whitney has written a believable and highly readable historical and sociological novel, set in Zaire during the time of Mobutu Sese-Seku, but also during the time of the great Ali-Foreman fight.  Readers of a certain age are encouraged to remember those times of world-wide political upheaval as being essentially more innocent and hopeful than these times of the same.  And readers of a different certain age (read "younger") are encouraged to believe that they, as individuals, can play a small part in changing the world.  Not many novels that I know of, can make that claim.” --Richard Wiley, PEN/Faulkner Award winning author of Soldiers in Hiding, and eight other works of fiction. 

Publishing date: July 16, 2022

Language: English

Paperback: 338 pages

ISBN:  978-1-958419-16-8

Dimensions: ‎ 6 x 0.71 x 9 inches

Ruth Linnea Whitney lived two years in Zaire (now DRC) and has spent numerous lengthy sojourns in other countries of Africa. These experiences inform the new novel, Mimosa Road, and her debut novel, Slim (Southern Methodist Univ. Press, 2003), which focuses on the coming of HIV/AIDS to sub-Saharan Africa. Slim  received the First Book Award from the Writer’s Guild of the Presbyterian Church USA. Her short stories and personal essays appear in The Threepenny Review, Kaleidoscope, Natural Bridge, Assisi, and elsewhere. She has taught ESL in Vietnam, Zaire, Uganda, and at Peninsula College in Port Townsend, Washington, where she makes her home.