He said, When a man lies with his leg sliced open and the bone sticking out, there is no time for preaching. Father had tried to carry on with the church work, but he was often too busy with the hospital. There had been a minister at our mission, but he had left to serve in the war. My parents had been sent from England as missionaries to the Kikuyu and the Masai. At last it reached Tumaini, the mission hospital where my father was a doctor and my mother a teacher. In British East Africa, where I was living, the influenza began in the seaport of Mombasa, traveled three hundred miles to the city of Nairobi, and from there crept onto the farms and plantations and into the Kikuyu and Masai shambas. In America half a million people died in India, many, many millions. All over the world the cruel influenza had been taking lives. It was 1919, and because the Great War was over, we had thought all the deaths were at an end, but it wasn’t so. It crept up on us like the hyenas I heard at night from my window, drawn to us, Kanoro said, by the smell of death. I would recommend it to fans of historical fiction and children's classics. It's well written (my favorite so far of the Gloria Whelan books I have read) and well-narrated by Bianca Amato. Will she ever be able to tell him the truth? And will she ever be able to return to her beloved Africa?I greatly enjoyed listening to this audiobook. As she remains with him, Rachel grows fond of the old gentleman, and begins to love him as she would her own grandfather. Rachel resolves to tell the truth anyway, but then she meets the ailing old gentleman, whose health is so frail that she fears the startling news of his granddaughter's death and his son's duplicity in sending Rachel could have disastrous consequences. Rachel is hesitant to take part in the scheme, but her only other option is being sent to the orphanage her own parents grew up in. Rachel will take that daughter's place on a voyage to England, to visit the dead girl's grandfather and get into his good graces. When both of her parents die in the 1919 influenza epidemic, Rachel falls into the clutches of a scheming family who have just lost their own daughter. She was born in Africa, and she loves it there.

Character logs for each Book in the novel.Rachel Sheridan is the daughter of missionaries. Board page for geographic location of Kenya, Background notes for illness mentioned in the story, Think/Comment quotes for each chapter except Ch. Word Study and Spelling Ladder puzzle pages for each Book, Quizzes for each part, WITH ANSWER KEYS: one page quiz for Book 1 and two pages Focus Questions for each chapter, WITH ANSWER KEYS, Gloria Whelan does a terrific job of bringing life in the wilds of Africa into reality and these questions and writing opportunities focus students' attention on that reality.

With settings both in Kenya, Africa and England, the contrasts in this novel help keep students' attention.

Listening for lions by gloria whelan