Written by Bella Philip
When Olive MacLeod’s intended husband is killed on an excursion to Africa, she does the only logical thing there is to do: she goes to find him.
My favourite aspect of Olive The Lionheart isn’t any part of the book itself, but its origin. The author, Brad Ricca, found Olive’s hidden diaries and after some debate, brought them to life. He also used historical documents and first-hand accounts to piece together Olive’s life. Ricca then decided to document Olive’s journey as a narrative, using the language and perspective of her time. His inclusion of Olive’s letters, diaries, and documents from the time (or ones made to look like they were) set this book apart and allow for a connection that the third-person perspective, unfortunately, does not.
Ricca’s version of Olive is decent, though I think she could’ve been fleshed out more. Her character development, however, was excellent, which makes sense as she must have been forced to get over herself pretty quickly as a pampered aristocrat who decided to travel to colonial Africa. The unabashed colonialism (and the resultant white tinted perspective) is discomfiting at best, but apropos for the time in many cases. The style of narration makes such ideas unavoidable, so all that can be done is to stay present and remember what time Olive lived. Personally, this was very difficult to do, but it depends on the reader. Unfortunately, this aspect of the novel played a role in my lack of connection to Olive and her plight, but despite it, I could appreciate her situation and what she must have had to overcome, especially as a woman during that time.
There were some structural issues that disrupted my reading experience. One of these would be that some of the chapters were out of order for no apparent reason. As a device to deepen the plot, it would be interesting, but in this case, it only serves to hold information from the reader that could let them get more deeply invested in the story. For example, at the very beginning of the novel, we rush through the meeting of Olive and the man she supposedly loves enough to go on a dangerous journey to another continent. At the beginning of her journey, I didn’t care or have any clue what her motivations were (or his, as a matter of fact, for marrying her, which is information we get within pages of their meeting). It annoyed me that she’d potentially throw her life away for a man she only deemed “interesting”. While there is correspondence between them shown later in the novel, I still think there should’ve been more of a set up for their relationship in the beginning.
I thought the writing itself was rather good, considering Ricca undertook the feat of incorporating early 20th-century language to make the narrative more realistic. There were definitely moments that took me out of the novel, be that grammatical errors, strange wording, or blatant inconsistencies in the writing, but I imagine much of this will be fixed in the finished copies. Ricca took many opportunities to showcase his writing prowess, and I admire his skill in describing settings and characters, though I wish it was done more often.
Overall, Ricca’s tale is engaging, especially due to it being rooted in reality. Olive The Lionheart is a unique tale based on true events, and a real adventurer, who has been relegated to relative obscurity for the majority of history. While I question the need for a book about a white woman in colonial Africa who takes a largely colonialist perspective, without holding that position against it, I can honestly say that Olive The Lionheart is a very interesting read.
Olive The Lionheart is available from Amazon and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
From the Edgar-nominated author of the bestselling Mrs. Sherlock Holmes comes the true story of a woman’s quest to Africa in the 1900s to find her missing fiancé, and the adventure that ensues.
In 1910, Olive MacLeod, a thirty-year-old, redheaded Scottish aristocrat, received word that her fiancé, the famous naturalist Boyd Alexander, was missing in Africa.
So she went to find him.
Olive the Lionheart is the thrilling true story of her astonishing journey. In jungles, swamps, cities, and deserts, Olive and her two companions, the Talbots, come face-to-face with cobras and crocodiles, wise native chiefs, a murderous leopard cult, a haunted forest, and even two adorable lion cubs that she adopts as her own. Making her way in a pair of ill-fitting boots, Olive awakens to the many forces around her, from shadowy colonial powers to an invisible Islamic warlord who may hold the key to Boyd’s disappearance. As these secrets begin to unravel, all of Olive’s assumptions prove wrong and she is forced to confront the darkest, most shocking secret of all: why she really came to Africa in the first place.
Drawing on Olive’s own letters and secret diaries, Olive the Lionheart is a love story that defies all boundaries, set against the backdrop of a beautiful, unconquerable Africa.
Olive MacLeod was my great great aunt, and I knew her older sister, my great grandmother, who was very close to her and lived to a great age, well. It seems to me that Olive’s story has been tweaked for romantic effect. She must have known what had happened to Boyd Alexander before she travelled, because she brought a headstone for his grave with her, his murder had already been reported by the French authorities in what is now South Sudan, and his travelling companions had reported recovering his body and conveying it hundreds of miles to be buried near Lake Chad alongside his brother, who had died on Boyd Alexander’s celebrated previous expedition “From the Niger to the Nile”. Olive hadn’t been in love with him; she had turned down three proposals of marriage from him, which was the reason for his returning to Africa. She undertook the journey out of guilt that his death had been the indirect consequence of her refusal. On her way home in 1911, she met Charles Temple, a British official in Nigeria, and married him a year later.