The Lioness

Billy Stepanov is another point-of-view character and one of the survivors. At the time of the safari, Billy is 35, five years older than Katie. He has a four-year-old son, Marc, from his first marriage to Amelia and is expecting a child with Margie, his second wife. Billy is a psychotherapist and frequently works with people who have experienced trauma, but he occasionally feels like he has more difficulties than his patients do. These include a fear of flying that is more generally connected to claustrophobia, the result of his mother’s tactic of locking him in the front coat closet when she was displeased with him. She would leave Billy in there overnight, without access to food, water, or a bathroom, and the lights would go off when the family went to bed. Billy thinks of those closet nights as a dark night of the soul, and they have haunted him ever since.

Billy is otherwise a pleasant and good-natured person. He wants to be a good father and pays attention to his wife, showing concern about her injuries and whether she is being taken care of during their captivity. In this way, Billy is a foil for David, who won’t risk himself to care for another. After his return to California, Billy marries for the third time, and Carmen says he is happy. He writes a memoir about his experiences that becomes a bestseller, suggesting that Billy has processed his trauma in a healthy way and, like Carmen, gone on to live his life.

David Hill is another point-of-view character and in some ways the cause of the novel’s action. David grew up in the same apartment building as the Stepanovs and was Billy’s best friend. Katie recalls that David was good-looking and also nice to her. David’s father is key to the book’s action because, after working for the Secret Service during the war, he now works for the CIA. David thinks he does something in personnel and is unaware that his father is involved in top-secret MK-ULTRA experiments. One of these involves using LSD, a psychotropic drug, as an interrogation tactic. The implication is that the CIA has experimented on Russian captives, making revenge one of the factors motivating Viktor Procenko to arrange the kidnapping. To locate David, Procenko’s sister, Nina, pretends to defect to the United States and becomes professionally and then sexually involved with David.

David has not been monogamous during his courtship of and engagement to Katie, sleeping first with Nina and then with a waitress at the local diner, which turns out to be a setup for blackmail. David proves himself weak-willed in both sexual constancy (he thinks he wants to be exclusive with Katie but then is not) and honesty about his financial state. This weakness proves deadly: He is ashamed to tell Katie that the gallery is struggling for money and instead conspires with Procenko to arrange a kidnapping of their safari group in return for a cut of the ransom, or so he believes. This complicity is the reason David doesn’t help the others defend themselves when the Russians take them captive. When David learns that Procenko’s goal is to take David to Moscow, he acts in his own defense, seizing Procenko’s gun, but is promptly shot and killed. David is a foil for Felix, another self-serving sort who looks for his own advantage.

Carmen begins as a seemingly minor character, a supporting actress to Katie’s movie star, but she emerges as the lioness of the title through her courage, self-sufficiency, and care for others. Carmen also grew up in New York, in Westchester, and she remembers seeing a theater show with Katie in it when she was young. Carmen isn’t afraid to work hard; as she conveys in one of the fictional entertainment news reports, she has fought to get where she is.

Carmen was in love with Felix but had a different conception of him than who he turned out to be. When she sees how he responds when they are attacked, she can’t help but feel contempt. She knew Felix to be concerned about his own self-preservation and his ego—he is always trying to improve his standing in others’ eyes by mentioning his admired and powerful father, director Rex Demeter—but his physical sickness in the face of violence still disappoints her. Nevertheless, Carmen feels real grief when Felix is killed before her eyes, and she regrets that she has to leave his body behind without a proper burial.

Carmen’s grit, determination, and resilience show through when she acts, in concert with Reggie, to attack their captors. She strangles their driver with her scarf to get free. She then tends Reggie’s wounds during the night, showing genuine attachment to and concern for him despite her fear for her own life. Part of what helps Carmen survive is her energy; her intelligence is another factor. She jokes that she remembers trivial details, but this shows her curiosity and cleverness. She participates in her own rescue by setting the baobab tree on fire, a further example of her fighting spirit. Then, once she is home and healed, she goes back to work and ends up with a secure job: a recurring role in a show that resembles General Hospital, a soap opera that debuted in 1963. This ability to survive and in fact triumph earns Carmen the title of “lioness,” which Reggie confers on her.

Terrance Dutton is another point-of-view character and a foil to the other men of the group. Terrance is a Black man whose parents were born in Tennessee but subsequently moved to Detroit, presumably as part of the Great Migration: the movement of millions of Black Americans from homes in the American South to northern states where racism and prejudice generally manifested in less life-threatening ways. Terrance has nonetheless received death threats, particularly for his involvement with white women; his kiss with Katie in Tender Madness was cut from the film because it was likely to upset a racist white audience and damage the studio’s profits.

Terrance’s inclusion in the book provides a Black American’s perspective on visiting Africa, developing the theme of The Legacy of Colonialism. His chapters show him encountering lingering aspects of colonialism, like white ownership of “plantations”; his instinctive revulsion at this word, as a Black man whose ancestors were enslaved on plantations in the American South, implies that these African farms are not so benign as his conversational partner, Judy, insists. Similarly, Terrance interrogates the imperialist perspective embedded in the term “great white hunter” (159). As a character, Terrance is direct, intelligent, and not foolhardy. He nearly succeeds in his gamble to free the others the first time, and he shows bravery in his attempt, with Billy, to subdue their captors in a second attempt at freedom.

Charlie Patton is not one of the point-of-view characters, but he is a central figure in that he appears frequently in flashbacks. He is a reference point for the discussion about white presence in Africa, and he is a portrait that touches on the novel’s themes of masculinity, adaptability, survival, and human predation. Benjamin, who is a Tanzanian man employed by Patton, notes that “Patton still carrie[s] himself with the bravado and elan of one of the great white hunters” (33), thus aligning him with a colonial mode of masculinity. Similarly, Katie notes: “He was a raconteur, but he was wholly without filter or the slightest instinct for his audience. He still seemed to live with one foot in another era, the world before the war” (97).

This idea of Charlie as an antique figure is connected not only to imperialism but also to its shifting manifestations—e.g., in the tourist industry. The question of how Charlie feels about turning from leading hunting safaris to leading photo safaris is brought up several times, the implication being that he likely views hunting, as the more dangerous pursuit, to be more masculine and more worthy of admiration. Charlie has not entirely given up this side of his job, as shown by his arrangement to take Peter Merrick hunting after Katie’s safari ends. Katie’s suggestion that his work is now more performative—producing spectacle, like a carnival barker, rather than exhibiting cunning and skill—offends Charlie, suggesting insecurity regarding his current role. On the other hand, there are hints that the popular perception of Charlie (and the archetype he represents) was always somewhat at odds with the reality. For instance, Carmen thinks that it was cowardly of him to retreat when the Russians attacked. However, Charlie’s strategic retreat allows Carmen to be rescued, which suggests that the “heroic” model of masculinity Charlie ostensibly embodies is not the most practical response to violence. The question of whether a man like Charlie has a place in modern Africa is one that the novel leaves unresolved, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Benjamin is another point-of-view character, providing a Tanzanian perspective on the issue of white tourism in Africa. He is a young man whom Charlie employs for both hunting and photographic excursions; in this, he follows in the footsteps of his father, who works for Charlie as well. This is not the only area in which Benjamin has experienced the impact of a colonial economic system; he also recalls the suffering his grandfather endured while working in the gold mines.

Benjamin speaks to the novel’s interest in survival when he tells Muema he would rather be predator than prey, but his remark also has symbolic significance in light of his support for African independence and self-sovereignty: That he would rather die defending himself rather than submit (as David does) to the kidnappers echoes his broader political stance. Indeed, the two are interrelated, as Bohjalian implies that the Russians are conveying the African porters to the mines to serve as forced labor. The Cold War conflict playing out in Africa thus risks condemning Benjamin to share his grandfather’s fate, implying that very little has changed in the nominally postcolonial era. The irony of Benjamin being caught in the crossfire when his own people stage a rescue underscores this point. He is evidence of the innocent casualties when outside forces, in this case the Russians and Americans, bring their own battles to Africa.