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"Nigeria is the place of my hidden self," writes Elaine Neil Orr in Gods of Noonday, A White Girl's African Life, "that is truer than my public self. It is the country of my heart. But having left Yoruba land long ago, I have become broken." Hailed by The Tennessean as "Poignant, funny, and often excruciating," Gods of Noonday is a lyrical portrayal of loss and rebirth that tells the story of a white girl growing up the daughter of American missionaries in West Africa and a meditation on identity that explores land's inextricability from being and memory. "Here is a rare example of a memoir that turns experience into knowledge and teaches us without being prescriptive," writes African Studies professor Toyin Falola, "in the process giving us an unmistakable portrait of the remarkable power of human dignity."

Elaine Neil Orr was born in Nigeria in 1954 and lived there until the age of sixteen before leaving permanently. Gods of Noonday recounts Orr's childhood and ultimate departure from Nigeria during the social and political upheaval of the Biafran war. It also tells of her current struggle with diabetes, as debilitating spiritually as it is physically, and the life-threatening kidney failure that prompt her realization that only by reclaiming her homeland would she find the strength to persevere. "As with many Yoruba rituals," she writes, "this one is a journey, a journey back in order to go forward." Orr's time in Africa left an indelible impression on her, the Yoruba landscapes and customs shaping her life as much as The Beatles and American television, and her descriptions of the Ethiope River and Nigeria range from poetic to austere, revealing in all its color and intricacy a land that encompasses deserts and rain forests, silent rivers and the tumult of civil war. "This amazing memoir shares with the reader the remarkable intelligence, honesty, and lyrical sensibility of Elaine Orr," writes author Sena Jeter Naslund. "I read this fresh, insightful, and original book in a constant state of wonder and excitement."

Gods of Noonday has been nominated as one of the best books of 2003 in the creative nonfiction category by SEBA (South Eastern Bookseller Association).

Orr is a professor of contemporary literature and women's studies at North Carolina State University. She has received writing fellowships in creative nonfiction from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and has published two scholarly works. She has also published several essays in journals such as Modern Language Quarterly, The Louisville Review, and Southern Cultures. Her move to the U.S. left a tremendous void, and though a long way from home she still thinks of Nigeria. "Such a separation creates a sharp division in your soul… When someone speaks to you about some issue of the day, you stammer and call yourself back over highways and rivers and paths but your return is listless and insincere. You never turn to the present entirely. Doing so would be a betrayal."

-- Marc Bain

www.elaineneilorr.com