On December 28, 1985 after eighteen years of research in the dripping rain forests of the Virunga volcanoes in central Africa, Dian Fossey was brutally murdered. Though not quite fifty-four years old, she had lived a life as remarkable and rewarding as that of any woman of our time.
Dian Fossey went to Africa at the urging of famed anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey to study one of the rarest, most mysterious animals on earth: the wild mountain gorilla. She found the great, gentle apes threatened on all sides by zoo collectors, poachers, herdsmen and scientists. Slowly, she came to understand the magnificent creatures on their own terms, to understand and admire--even to love them. She became their greatest champion--and their greatest martyr.
Virunga is the startling true account of Dian Fossey's life as told by Canada's favorite wildlife writer, Farley Mowat. Based on Fossey's private correspondence, journals, camp records, personal papers and interviews with her colleagues, friends and enemies, it is the story of one woman's inexhaustible passion for life--and the creatures who share it with us.