Listening for Lions by Gloria Whelan

This book reads like a memoir or a biography rather than a work of fiction. It seems so real, you can almost feel that it really happened. Rachel is growing up in Africa in a remote area where her father, a doctor, and her mother, a teacher, work together to provide education and health care to the Kikuye and Maasai people who live in the rural area. But, this is shortly after World War I and even remote African villages are not far enough away to escape the influenza epidemic. Rachel's parent both die, as does a neighboring white child who just happens to have had red hair, just like Rachel. The neighbor's parents, self-centered and typical colonial overlords, decide to take in Rachel and to pretend that she is their daughter. They tell everyone that it is Rachel who died and not Valerie. Then they send Rachel in Valerie's place to visit her rich grandfather in England - to beg for more money and favors. They tell Rachel that she will be saving the old man's life, since he dotes on his granddaughter. Rachel agrees to the scheme, because, having just lost both her parents, she is powerless to figure out how to resist and she is taken in by their claim that she will let an old man die in peace when he sees his granddaughter.

But, when she arrives in England, determined to tell everyone the truth, she does find the old man virtually at death's door. So she plays along, discovering mutual interests and loves in the process - the birds, the estate, the people who are tenants on the estate. Though he doesn't tell her, the grandfather eventually figures out the truth. The story comes to a head, when the parents return to England, supposedly to visit their daughter. The grandfather throws them out, since they have a past history of drinking, gambling, and abuse of the family. They insist on taking their "daughter" with them, but she manages to escape and make her way to the grandfather's lawyer. She confesses and expects to be thrown out, but instead, she is returned to the grandfather, whom she genuinely adores.

She is sent to school. Eventually, the old man does die, leaving his estate to the Bird Society. Rachel is also left with sufficient income so that she can attend medical school, which she is determined to do, so that she can return to Africa and rebuild the hospital her parents worked so hard to establish.

This is a good story - a bit too good in some minor aspects - how lucky it is that her benefactor is so rich. But it examines the tension between honesty and kindness and the difficulty of doing the right thing at times - or even knowing exactly what the right thing is. Eventually Rachel seems to figure her way out and it is an uplifting ending.

All in all, a quite satisfying book.