ABOUT THE AUTHOR & THE BOOK

When Olive MacLeod met famous naturalist Boyd Alexander in the early 1900s, her impressive spirit  led him to ask her to be his wife. Shortly thereafter, the naturalist encountered serious trouble during an expedition to West Africa in 1910. When Olive got word that something had happened to Boyd, she headed to unmapped regions to find him, willing to face down any danger.

Olive the Lionheart is the thrilling true story of her astonishing journey. In jungles, swamps, cities, and deserts, Olive and her two companions, the Talbots, come face-to-face with cobras and crocodiles, worldly native chiefs, a murderous leopard cult, a haunted forest, and even two adorable lion cubs that she adopts as her own. Making her way in a pair of ill-fitting boots, Olive awakens to the many forces around her, from shadowy colonial powers to an invisible Islamic warlord who may hold the key to Boyd’s disappearance. As these secrets begin to unravel, all of Olive’s assumptions prove wrong and she is forced to confront the darkest, most shocking secret of all: why she really came to Africa in the first place.

Drawing on Olive’s own letters and secret diaries—documents which have never been published—Olive the Lionheart is a love story that defies all boundaries, set against the backdrop of a beautiful, unconquerable Africa.

BRAD RICCA is the author of the Edgar Award-nominated Mrs. Sherlock Holmes and Super Boys, and winner of the Ohioana Book Award for Nonfiction. He won the St. Lawrence Book Award for American Mastodon. Ricca lives and works in Cleveland.