The Witch Doctor's Wife [Paperback]

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!

"The Witch Doctor's Wife" by Tama Meyers tells the story of the diamond industry in The Congo in the late `50's. What makes this story interesting is that the author was born and raised in The Congo so this fictional story takes on an even greater meaning. What detracts from this story is the multitude of characters - some underdeveloped, some appearing to be just place holders and others serving a distinct purpose. I put the down about half way through and had a hard time trying to remember who was who and where the story was going.

While the first third of the book was very interesting - setting the story up, giving great background and detail of The Congo (you feel you can hear the water falls!) and introducing the plucky main character. From there the story dissolves with the introduction of too many supporting characters, the mystery and ultimately the climax at the ending. There was too much going on at the end of the story and too many of the plots resolved too quickly.

While I enjoyed this book, I felt that it needed a good editing and a decrease in supporting characters. If Ms. Meyers intends to have a sequel, my suggestion would be to stick to the main character in the story - the location. I was ready to book a trip to the dark continent while reading the book!

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

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