David Marcus. TALES FROM THE CROSS. Air-ambulance pilot in Africa

2013. Soft cover, 221 pages. Condition as new. Parcel under 1kg.  

Tales From the Cross follows the adventures of a South African attorney, Harry Kamel, whose interest in aeroplanes leads him to volunteer to fly an air-ambulance in South Africa, and sometimes into our northern neighbours (and further afield) where a medical team goes about their medical rescue duties.

The book is set in late apartheid and early democratic South Africa and as far afield as Rwanda during their terrible genocide in 1994 while South Africans were self-absorbed with the first democratic election.  While the book is one continuous fictionalised narrative, there are eight cases highlighted and these, incredible as it may seem at times, ring reasonably true to the more than thirty years I have spent as a medical volunteer with St John Ambulance Brigade. Part of the charm of the book is the pains the author, David Marcus, takes to paint the canvas on which the events of each story unfold.  The facts are often little known and one feels privileged to be privvy to them.