The Sands of Kalahari

The Sands of Kalahari, first published in 1960, begins its gripping story with the crash-landing of a small plane carrying seven people in the harsh Kalahari desert. Their struggle to survive in the wilderness around them¿as well as each other¿make up the bulk of this classic tale of adventure. A film version of the book was made in 1965. From the book cover: To the desert came the plane, to the immeasurable wastes of Africa. And by the dawn of the second day¿after the night storm, the hours of flight, the crash, the day of waiting, and the death of Detjens¿six remained, alone, strangers, with only themselves and the wreckage and the black mountain on the horizon for company. The six: Sturdevant, the pilot, burdened with a guilt far greater than the loss of his plane; Grimmelmann, the wizened old German, veteran of the Herero war and the two World Wars, wise in the lore of the desert and the ways of the world; Jefferson Smith, a Negro, a professor and a scholar, come to Africa on a Foundation grant; Mike Bain, engineer, drifter, drunkard, vaguely in search of a job in the interior, ill-equipped to cope with the demands of the desert; Grace Monckton, English divorcee, returning to her family's ranch in the Union; and finally, O'Brien, a man of great strength, sometime millionaire, sometime wanderer, a hunter by instinct and by choice. The six, brought together by chance, and with the odds of survival overwhelmingly against them, have only each other, for both friend and foe. Around them is the desert¿implacable, pitiless, filled with unseen enemies. And on the horizon is the black mountain, beyond which is hidden the unknown.