GORILLA DREAMS: The Legacy of Dian Fossey

About the Book

Imagine that murdered primatologist Dr. Dian Fossey of Gorillas in the Mist fame were alive today and able to reflect upon her death as well as her legacy. This is the impetus behind author Georgianne Nienaber's compelling work, Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey.

At the beginning of Gorilla Dreams, Fossey attends her own funeral and watches her murdered gorillas interacting with the graveside bystanders. She establishes a new relationship with the slain gorilla Digit, who acts as her guide after death as she carefully reviews her life, its challenges, successes, hardships, and the ultimate closure of her murder. Although Fossey's death is officially unsolved, recently released documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as testimony from the International War Crimes Tribunal proceedings, offer new suspects, motives, and opportunities. Every fact about Fossey's life is meticulously annotated. However, the setting of her conversations with the murdered gorillas is obviously fictional, yet steeped in African tradition.

Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey is a biographical interpretation of the famed primatologist's life that honors the African belief that the dead live on in spiritual form.

About the Author

Georgianne Nienaber has been an investigative environmental writer for more than thirty years and now writes a column for the Rwandan New Times. She lives in rural northern Minnesota. Recent articles have appeared in The United Nations Publication, A Civil Society Observer, AllAfrica.com, and Zimbabwe?s The Daily Mirror. Her fiction exposé of insurance fraud in the horse industry, Horse Sense, will be re-released in early 2006.