The Dark X

My wife Adrienne Zihlman is an anthropologist, and we've made more than ten trips to Africa, where we've observed chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, and many other animals in their native habitat. Adrienne first put pygmy chimpanzees (bonobos) on the scientific map when she suggested they have the closest resemblance to our earliest fossil relatives like "Lucy." Time magazine picked this up with a story called The Living Link. We've had many wild adventures in Africa and I've had many occasions to use my medical skills there. I've gotten to know several "ape ladies" who study theses primates, including Jane Goodall, and have served on the Board of the Jane Goodall Institute. These experiences led me to write this story, about an anthropologist who gets a strange disease and goes to Africa with her doctor to find the cause and cure.