Mystories of the Savannah

About the Book

The visionary adventure begins on the Savannah in Eastern Africa, c. 1962. We meet a baboon family. (Baboons are the only existing animal culture to witness the untimely end of past civilizations).

Next, we meet a human family; husband and wife scientists with a young son, who are in Africa to save the baboons from extinction by relocating them.

Although the couple is in Africa to prevent annihilation, Alex, the husband, while he journeys across the Savannah for many weeks with the baboons, finds his connection with history while he communicates in his unique tongue with the baboon tribe.

A CIA agent, McClay, is hunting for Alex because McClay has discovered that Alex is writing a book titled Animal Warfare. McClay has convinced the US government that Alex is training animals for warfare against the USA.

The baboons journey across Africa hundreds of miles to escape death by the farmer vigilantes. After being ambushed at a farmhouse, they take Alex-who had been accidentally shot and is unconscious - with them to save his life. The tribe, enlarging as it travels, to four hundred or more, reaches their Eden, the Mountains of the Moon, but their troubles aren't over.

Alex and Sara's son Jesse, who has contracted a life-threatening disease, is airlifted to a hospital.

From then on, the pace is picked up when a shooting, a murder and an unsolved mystery enters the story.

About the Author

Margaret Hehman-Smith is a professional artist. Her website - www.hehmansmith-artwork.com - displays over 40 paintings, drawings and original prints. She earned a BFA, 1973, and an MFA, 1975, from Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, California. She writes articles, short stories, and poetry, some reproduced on her website.

This novella was inspired by her late husband, Donald Leon Smith, an animal behaviorist and psychologist, who believed animals have yet to be acknowledged.for the capabilities they possess. The facts in this book are from Smith's research. He died at age 48 in 1985.

Margaret lives in Hollydale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. The den in her small house is a computer center, and the garage was converted to a studio so that she wouldn't have to go through her old routine of traveling to a loft in downtown LA.

The illustrations for this book were done by the author.

The final two pages of notes were written and sketched by Donald Leon Smith.