An Elephant in My Kitchen: What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage and Survival

by Françoise Malby-Anthony, Katja Willemsen

Overview

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Malby-Anthony offers a book of great inspiration and wide appeal to nature-loving readers." —Publishers Weekly

A heart-warming sequel to the international bestseller The Elephant Whisperer, by Lawrence Anthony's wife Françoise Malby-Anthony.

A chic Parisienne, Françoise never expected to find herself living on a South African game reserve. But then she fell in love with conservationist Lawrence Anthony and everything changed. After Lawrence’s death, Françoise faced the daunting responsibility of running Thula Thula without him. Poachers attacked their rhinos, their security team wouldn’t take orders from a woman and the authorities were threatening to cull their beloved elephant family. On top of that, the herd’s feisty new matriarch Frankie didn’t like her.

In this heart-warming and moving book, Françoise describes how she fought to protect the herd and to make her dream of building a wildlife rescue center a reality. She found herself caring for a lost baby elephant who turned up at her house, and offering refuge to traumatized orphaned rhinos, and a hippo called Charlie who was scared of water. As she learned to trust herself, she discovered she’d had Frankie wrong all along.

Filled with extraordinary animals and the humans who dedicate their lives to saving them, An Elephant in My Kitchen is a captivating and gripping read.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250756503
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/03/2020
Series:	Elephant Whisperer , #2
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	82,929
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

FRANCOISE MALBY-ANTHONY founded the Thula Thula game reserve in 1998 with her late husband, the renowned conservationist and internationally bestselling author Lawrence Anthony. When Lawrence died in 2012, Francoise took over the running of the reserve and is equally passionate about conservation. She was the driving force behind setting up a wildlife rehabilitation center at the reserve to care for orphaned animals. She currently resides in South Africa.

KATJA WILLEMSEN was born in Holland, grew up in South Africa and now lives in France. A full-time writer, she is the author of the thriller Shepherd’s Prayer. An Elephant in My Kitchen is her first work of nonfiction.

Table of Contents

1 The only walls between humans and elephants are the ones we put up ourselves 1

2 Falling in love with Thabo 14

3 Poaching is war 29

4 Magic money tree 35

5 Reality strikes 50

6 Enfant terrible 62

7 French temperament 74

8 Baby Thula 82

9 Long live the king 93

10 Dangerous deals 105

11 Courage is doing what you're afraid to do 118

12 Ubuntu 127

13 Stars are brighter in Africa 136

14 How do I keep you safe? 147

15 Never give up 156

16 An elephant in my kitchen 162

17 Follow your dreams, they know the way 177

18 Ellie 192

19 And then there were seven 202

20 Silent killers 219

21 Only when the well dries do we know the value of water 232

22 Rather a live rhino without a horn than a dead rhino without one 240

23 The hippo who hated water 258

24 Love in the bush 271

25 Nowhere is safe 287

26 Keeping the dream alive 302

27 Frankie vs Frankie 312

Afterword 323

Editorial Reviews

"An Elephant in My Kitchen is a moving and often amusing account of a life filled with compassion and resolve." —Wall Street Journal

"The writing is full of vivid descriptions that place readers in the middle of the action, making the book difficult to put down. An engrossing eye-opener on the fragility of South Africa's fauna." —Kirkus

"The most magical book about the African bush since Born Free" —Daily Mail

"A must-read for animal lovers" —People's Friend

From the Publisher

06/10/2019

In this enchanting sequel to the late conservationist Lawrence Anthony’s 2012 memoir, The Elephant Whisperer, his widow, Malby-Anthony, recounts how she carried on protecting elephants and rhinos after his death. She explains how such an unlikely couple—she was once a “city girl” and “Parisian through and through”; he, an adventurous and “passionate visionary”—met and, in 1998, founded the Thula Thula game preserve in his native South Africa. Animal lovers will be swept up in Malby-Anthony’s narrative early on, when she describes an elephant herd’s grief at Lawrence’s death. Previously involved chiefly in the preserve’s business affairs, Malby-Anthony begins caring for the animals after Lawrence’s death, and, among other things, must navigate the passage of power from one elephant matriarch to another and attempt to comfort a calf with a missing mother. Malby-Anthony shares lighthearted moments—a young hippo following a terrified local man “like a baby duck”; an attention-seeking elephant calf given to twerking—along with heartbreaking observations on the toll exacted by poachers. Contrasting human depredations to how elephants “coexist... with endless respect and love for each other,” Malby-Anthony offers a book of great inspiration and wide appeal to nature-loving readers. Agent: Jon Mitchell, Pan Mac. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Narrator Roshina Ratnam drops listeners straight into the African bush, conveying the urgency and passion of running Zululand’s Thula Thula Game Reserve and Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. As the memoir opens, Ratnam is perfectly understated when voicing Malby-Anthony’s shell-shocked bewilderment at her husband’s sudden death. She must continue running their reserve on her own, working as a businesswoman, conservationist, and writer. Listeners joyfully follow the author’s daily interactions with the reserve’s highly intelligent wildlife. However, her world constantly balances between wonder and heartbreak. The visceral and relentless horrors of poaching sound all too real as Malby-Anthony describes her efforts to protect, and often rescue, the animals she knows intimately. Ratnam’s performance brings dignity to the complex emotional lives of the audiobook’s animals. J.T. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2020 - AudioFile

Narrator Roshina Ratnam drops listeners straight into the African bush, conveying the urgency and passion of running Zululand’s Thula Thula Game Reserve and Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. As the memoir opens, Ratnam is perfectly understated when voicing Malby-Anthony’s shell-shocked bewilderment at her husband’s sudden death. She must continue running their reserve on her own, working as a businesswoman, conservationist, and writer. Listeners joyfully follow the author’s daily interactions with the reserve’s highly intelligent wildlife. However, her world constantly balances between wonder and heartbreak. The visceral and relentless horrors of poaching sound all too real as Malby-Anthony describes her efforts to protect, and often rescue, the animals she knows intimately. Ratnam’s performance brings dignity to the complex emotional lives of the audiobook’s animals. J.T. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2020 - AudioFile

2019-08-28
The sequel to The Elephant Whisperer (2009), which was written by Malby-Anthony's late husband, conservationist Lawrence Anthony.

In 1998, the author and her husband founded Thula Thula, a game reserve in South Africa where they rescued a herd of elephants. But when Lawrence died unexpectedly, Malby-Anthony was faced with the formidable task of continuing their work alone, with a limited ability to speak the native language in a land where few women hold positions of authority. In this endearing and inspirational follow-up to The Elephant Whisperer—written with the assistance of Willemsen (Shepherd's Prayer, 2012), who grew up in South Africa—Malby-Anthony shares how she not only managed to preserve their elephant herd, but went on to Phase 2 of their dream: opening a nursery for orphaned baby elephants, a hippo who didn't like water, and rhinos whose mothers had been killed for their horns. The author shares multiple stories about her daunting mission to bring these orphaned animals back from the brink of death due to starvation, dehydration, and simple fear. She discusses the disgusting nature of poaching for horns ("they turned her beautiful face into a gruesome mess of blood and flesh, and she was alive when they did it….They butchered her while she was a breathing, living, feeling rhino"), which command incredible prices on the black market, and the extreme measures she takes in order to protect the animals in her care. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, the game reserve was still brutally attacked. The common threads that run throughout her story are love and respect for these wild animals and the heartwarming nature of the animal families that embrace each other as well as Malby-Anthony and her dogs. The writing is full of vivid descriptions that place readers in the middle of the action, making the book difficult to put down.

An engrossing eye-opener on the fragility of South Africa's fauna.

Kirkus Reviews