Jude Wilson grows up in Clarksville, Washington with his loving adopted parents Tom and Doris. He especially enjoys camping and fishing with his father, the scoutmaster of the only Boy Scout troop in their town. After attending college, Jude takes a position with a market research company. When someone close to him succumbs to cancer, he thinks about the things he wants to do in life before he dies, one of which is to travel to Kenya to visit the graves of Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts organization, and Captain Tom Wilson, Nairobi’s founding Boy Scout scoutmaster. Nine thousand miles away, Qadir lives with his Uncle Hussein in Nairobi, Kenya along with Hussein’s wife Mariam and their sons, Abdi and Faisal. When he loses his job at Mashariki Enterprises, he reluctantly accepts a position with a YMCA youth hostel in Nairobi.

Ndirangu Githaiga’s PLACE OF COOL WATERS is about Jude’s erratic trip to Kenya, his relationship with Qadir and other people he meets there, and the surprising information he learns about his own heritage and one of the Boy Scout heroes he had admired. Githaiga, a native Kenyan, does an exemplary job describing the terrain, customs, criminal activity, and political climate of the country. He gives readers a palpable sense of the goodhearted people who live there as well as street thugs who blatantly steal from others without thinking twice about it. PLACE OF COOL WATERS (the literal translation of Nairobi) is a realistic snapshot of what it’s like to live in Kenya’s capitol city as told by someone with firsthand experience. The book’s plotline is absorbing and engaging as readers follow Jude–a deftly-painted, intriguing character who will be relatable to many–on his journey to Nairobi. Githaiga’s writing style is fluent and easy to follow with ample detail that aids in weaving together the story elements. This, combined with an appropriate amount of back story, make it easy to understand the characters and their actions throughout the narrative.

A well-written and compelling novella, Ndirangu Githaiga’s PLACE OF COOL WATERS relies on first-hand knowledge of Nairobi, Kenya and features interesting characters, descriptive settings, a unique plot, and significant roadblocks for the protagonist.

~Florence Osmund for IndieReader