
Even if everything had gone as planned, Dr. Lucas Stuart and his fellow missionaries in a remote Angolan outpost in the early nineteen seventies would have found their task a dangerous and daunting one. They had signed on for a life-and-death struggle, after all, when they committed to pit their knowledge, skills, and Christian faith against the formidable diseases and injuries rampant in the region, and compounded by widespread poverty and the scarcity of modern medicine. But Lucas and his colleagues hadn't expected to find themselves caught up in the man-made strife of brutal civil wars that would set them off on journeys that would bring them face-to-face with terrors ranging from unpredictable insurgent combatants to the newly-emerging Ebola virus, roadside predators, hungry crocodiles, and white slavery. And Lucas certainly hadn't expected to fall in love in the midst of the turmoil, setting off on a different sort of journey with a missionary nurse, Angela Abercombie, and their unlikely companion, a dog named Iuba. For Lucas and Angela, the harrowing travels through the African landscape are also a journey of the heart.