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The eBook was FREE at all retailers from April 7th - July 15th, 2024 to commemorate the hundred days of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. #NeverForget
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"There’s plenty of sharp, suspenseful action to savor here in this impressively poignant, hauntingly realistic, and searingly moving tale. Schafer intensively explores themes of racism, violence, war, and human welfare. Vivid, boldly written, life-affirming historical fiction drawn from the horrors of the Rwandan genocide crisis." —Kirkus Reviews
In response to the worldwide epidemic of genocides and to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, Suanne Schafer has issued a second edition of Hunting the Devil, revised and with a new Author’s Note. The electronic edition will be free from April 7 through July 15, 2024, the hundred days the 1994 genocide lasted.
When biracial physician Jessica Hemings volunteers for a medical mission in Rwanda, she becomes entrapped in the maelstrom of Rwandan politics and the enmity between Hutu and Tutsi. Her US passport doesn’t afford the security she’d hoped for as her Tutsi-like features plunge her into horrors of the Rwandan Genocide. Dr. Cyprien Gatera, Jess's superior and a Hutu militant, commandeers her clinic, forces her to treat his wounded, and then slaughters her patients and her adopted sons. She escapes and finds refuge at Benaco refugee camp in Tanzania.
There, beset by grief, hatred, and PTSD, Jess vows revenge. With the help of Michel Fournier, a French lawyer-turned-war-correspondent, and Dr. Tom Powell, her ex-lover, she searches for Gatera who has fled Rwanda to escape post-genocide reprisals. When an unknown informant passes information to Jess about her nemesis, she returns to Rwanda, despite warnings from the Belgian Secret Service that Gatera plans to assassinate her. In their final showdown, Jess must decide if revenge is best served cold or not at all.
Part medical procedural, part global political thriller, part vigilante novel, and part fractured romance, Hunting the Devil moves from the dusty washboard roads of Rwanda to an inner-city hospital in America to the Natural History Museum of Belgium to the halls of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania as it deftly traces one woman’s journey toward justice.
-Acclaim-
“There’s plenty of sharp, suspenseful action to savor here in this impressively poignant, hauntingly realistic, and searingly moving tale. Schafer intensively explores themes of racism, violence, war, and human welfare. Vivid, boldly written, life-affirming historical fiction drawn from the horrors of the Rwandan genocide crisis.”
“Hunting the Devil brings genocide forward like a machete whishing from behind you in the night.”
“A moving journey of self-discovery and empowerment in the face of unimaginable brutality. Your mind and soul will not come away unscathed after reading this book. It will change you. Profoundly.”
“One of the best books I have read in a very long time. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, but be warned, it is not for the faint-hearted and the haunting scenes faithfully reflect what could and did happen and is still happening in more than one country right now. Hunting the Devil might shock you and shake you out of your daily cotton wool cocoon, but it’s true to life, and I applaud the author for bringing the horrendous subject of genocide to light.”
“In vivid and deeply textured scenes, Suanne Schafer creates a compassionate and strong female physician who endures horror and becomes a witness in the UN genocide trials, bringing justice to Rwandan victims. Hunting the Devil’s ‘eyewitness to history’ approach is by turns enthralling, horrifying, and ultimately heartbreaking.”
“Hunting the Devil is a tightly-written, riveting novel layered with finely-crafted characters, the exploration of racism, and the horror of war’s effects on individuals. Schafer has crafted an exciting tale that culminates with a daring climatic courtroom scene that will resonate and remain with readers long after the last page.”
“Someone told me Hunting the Devil was a tour-de-force and while I agree, I think that summary needs a few more words. Gut-wrenching. Honest. Powerful. This is a story of a woman who claws her way back from the worst kind of adversity with no explanations and no apologies. Schafer pulled me in and kept me enthralled to the very end.”
“This gripping novel travels the highs and lows of humanity and keeps readers on the edge of their seats. With powerful scenes and the ability to artistically weave the beautiful with the traumatizing, Ms. Schafer has written a novel that transcends time.”
I had so much fun doing a big, beautiful, artsy bookish giveaway haul last month, I've decided to do it again! This time, I'm upping the ante by including a $10 Amazon gift card in one of the prize combos. It's only on for eight days, so enter while you can... Good...
As the child of an intolerant oil field worker, I grew up all across the western United States. Little did I know that when I read Bandit Heaven: The Hole-in-the-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West I would recounter many of the places I’d lived. Bandit...
Zeke and Ned is a western in which Larry McMurtry works his magic, as he did in his magnificent, Pulitzer-Prize-winning Lonesome Dove series, in capturing the essence of life during America's more rustic years. In this case, he and his co-author fictionalize true...
Demon Copperhead, the protagonist of this eponymously titled novel, is born in trailer house in Lee County in the southern mountains of Appalachia to a teenaged mother with substance abuse issues. To tone down her labor pains, she overdoses as her son comes into the...
Stolen Lives is the second in Joyce Yarrow’s Zahara series. In the first, Zahara and the Lost Books of Light, Seattle-based journalist Alienor Crespo decides to document her journey to recover her Sephardic family’s past when Spain offers citizenship to those...
In Zahara and the Lost Books of Light, the first of two books in Joyce Yarrow's Zahara series, when Spain offers citizenship to descendants of the Jewish community who were expelled in the past, young Seattle-based journalist Alienor Crespo decides to document her...
Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari is a dual time-line story, one set in the 1950s and the other in 1995; both concern Yemeni Jews who have immigrated to Israel and Israeli politics during each timeframe. The novel begins in a wretched, over-crowded...
Ahmet Atlan is a Turkish author/journalist born into a family of authors. Like his father and brother, he was jailed unjustly after writing an article dedicated to the victims of the Armenian Genocide. After a failed July 2016 coup d'état in 2016 against President...
With a teenager in the house again after many years, I’ve been reading some Young Adult books to encourage their reading and discuss with them. I have always enjoyed Rick Riordan’s books, both his adult Tres Navarre mystery series and his many YA series. In the Magnus...
The Summer Before deals with child sexual abuse in an unusual and somewhat oblique way. The story focuses on the family, specially the daughter, of the perpetrator of the abuse and the rippling effects of that abuse. Madeline Plympton and Summer Starr are BFFs and...
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