THREE WEEKS IN DECEMBER BY AUDREY SCHULMAN

  

It tells the story of Jeremy, a young engineer, who leaves a small town in Maine to oversee the construction of a railroad across British East Africa in 1899.  He becomes the reluctant hunter of two lions that are killing his men on nightly attacks on his camp.  Plagued by fear, wracked with malaria and alienated by a secret that he can tell no one, he forms a friendship with a man who scouts for him.

In 2000, Max an American ethnobotonist, travels to Rwanda in search of an obscure vine that could become a lifesaving pharmaceutical. Stationed in the mountains, she shadows a family of gorillas.  Max has a gift for communicating with apes.  Soon the freedom of both is threatened as a violent rebel group from the nearby Congo draws close.