Katharina Gerlach

Juma's Rain Katharina Gerlach

A Fantasy Romance novel set in Stone Age Africa

The sun's rays parch Juma as she leads her all male family toward the main village. Nothing and no one will stop her from becoming the chieftess' apprentice. So she ignores the heat. Everything will be better near the lake. But the fields that should sprout green by now lie bare, with precious soil cracked and dry. Even the lake, thought to be everlasting, dwindles.

Juma discovers that heat daemon Mubuntu is out of control and that the rain goddess is still sleeping. But only Netinu, the chieftess' son, believes her, and he seems more interested in courting her than in the welfare of the tribe.

With her dreams going up in flames, Juma prepares to battle the daemon and wake the goddess - and maybe, in the process, prove herself worthy of becoming chieftess.

A few words from the author

The main character was named after my World Vision Goddaughter from Kenya. However, I made sure their characters differed greatly. After all this is a made-up Fantasy story. It is loosely based on Theodor Storm's novella "Die Regentrude" (Germany 1863) but is set in Africa in a tribe of the little known Nok. All we know about this culture is that they left very beautiful clay statues and kilns behind. As far as we know, they went directly from using stone to iron tools without first using copper and brass like the rest of the word. What little I was able to find out about the Nok, I found so fascinating that I wanted to make them come alive again. And what better way to do that than with a love story.