What do you think?
Daughter of the Leopard: True Stories From a Samburu Maasai Girlhood
A stubborn, precocious young girl is caught in the front line of the clash of cultures, as her remote tribe confronts new modern possibilities.
In 1970s Kenya, modernity's edge has finally made it up the hills to the Samburu tribe's secluded highland home. As her family reckons with new challenges to their ancient ways, young Monique chases belonging and her dreams. She sees her path towards independence, and away from being sold in young marriage. But with danger all around, it will take all of her grit, allies, and luck to stay on her chosen path, and to survive.
Real-life stories of a remarkable childhood, filled with humor, beauty, calamity, and featuring pre-electricity traditional village life, outlaws and bandits, magnificent wildlife, a crazy cow, a traditional healer grandfather, rescues and escapes, mean “Granny Ears” and her rhino-hide belt, Catholic boarding school, and much more.
In 1970s Kenya, modernity's edge has finally made it up the hills to the Samburu tribe's secluded highland home. As her family reckons with new challenges to their ancient ways, young Monique chases belonging and her dreams. She sees her path towards independence, and away from being sold in young marriage. But with danger all around, it will take all of her grit, allies, and luck to stay on her chosen path, and to survive.
Real-life stories of a remarkable childhood, filled with humor, beauty, calamity, and featuring pre-electricity traditional village life, outlaws and bandits, magnificent wildlife, a crazy cow, a traditional healer grandfather, rescues and escapes, mean “Granny Ears” and her rhino-hide belt, Catholic boarding school, and much more.
- GenresBiography
288 pages, Hardcover
Published October 26, 2025
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 26, 2025
What a fascinating look into the life of Monique, a girl who grew up in the Maasai tribe in Kenya. I have had the pleasure of meeting her and I had no idea of the ordeals that she went through as a young girl. What a courageous girl! So full of intelligence and grit. This was truly inspiring!
August 11, 2026
2.5 stars, but this really is for a middle-grade to YA audience: several aspects of the writing and organization make this more appropriate for younger readers. Examples:
1. Situations are oversimplified, even though language is otherwise ornate and flowery. For example, after propping hut doors closed at night, "they all, Monique and her relatives and their animals, slept peacefully, safe from the lions and leopards and hyenas that prowled outside, hungry and hunting in the silvery star-lit dark" (p. 17). Evocative, sure, but not very realistic; personal dynamics and interactions must have made plenty of nights less than perfectly peaceful or easy to sleep through. The narrator also recounts some of the cruelty from her mother and grandmother. It's largely factual but sometimes almost gleeful, with no attempt to interrogate wither woman's motives. A bad person who's just bad for no particular reason is a rather juvenile framing.
2. The story follows a chronological progression through the author's childhood. A more mature examination would start not necessarily at the beginning of time but the beginning of a thought, or would move around more in time to explore complex topics, such as the mother/grandmother and other family dynamics.
3. The story is presented in prose with chapter breaks and some section breaks, but info sections are given italicized headers and presented in a more textbook-ish fashion, such as the explanation of various grains and other foodstuffs (p. 40-44). No other sections like this were spotted in the dnf portion of the book, so is it an editorial oversight? Numbered lists do appear elsewhere, which is also less prose/more preachy.
4. Tone and intent vary, but many places are instructional (~this is how to do this task~) or even moralizing ("This is a funny story after drinking chang'aa: most stories [about drinking alcohol] are not funny. Most close elephant encounters also aren't funny. The uncles were exceedingly lucky they lived..." (p. 55)). The former would be of greatest interest to young readers who liked the processes and procedures in historical children's books a la Little House in the Big Woods. The latter is rather too blatant for an adult audience.
More practical editing would have been a big benefit. The writing liberally uses parenthetical remarks, but sometimes uses footnotes in the same way or for the same style of aside. Only one method of marginalia is needed. Many terms are italicized and appear in the glossary at the back, but some are also explained in footnotes, appearing in both places. An instruction directing readers to the glossary would he been sufficient. Some words are italicized but have neither a footnote nor a glossary entry (ex: parathas, p. 44). The glossary is a little thin and could certainly be more robust. Rather than a teaser chapter for the author's sequel publication, an index would be more useful.
Program topics: none suggested
Discussion prompts:
- [see questions given in the preface, p. xi]
1. Situations are oversimplified, even though language is otherwise ornate and flowery. For example, after propping hut doors closed at night, "they all, Monique and her relatives and their animals, slept peacefully, safe from the lions and leopards and hyenas that prowled outside, hungry and hunting in the silvery star-lit dark" (p. 17). Evocative, sure, but not very realistic; personal dynamics and interactions must have made plenty of nights less than perfectly peaceful or easy to sleep through. The narrator also recounts some of the cruelty from her mother and grandmother. It's largely factual but sometimes almost gleeful, with no attempt to interrogate wither woman's motives. A bad person who's just bad for no particular reason is a rather juvenile framing.
2. The story follows a chronological progression through the author's childhood. A more mature examination would start not necessarily at the beginning of time but the beginning of a thought, or would move around more in time to explore complex topics, such as the mother/grandmother and other family dynamics.
3. The story is presented in prose with chapter breaks and some section breaks, but info sections are given italicized headers and presented in a more textbook-ish fashion, such as the explanation of various grains and other foodstuffs (p. 40-44). No other sections like this were spotted in the dnf portion of the book, so is it an editorial oversight? Numbered lists do appear elsewhere, which is also less prose/more preachy.
4. Tone and intent vary, but many places are instructional (~this is how to do this task~) or even moralizing ("This is a funny story after drinking chang'aa: most stories [about drinking alcohol] are not funny. Most close elephant encounters also aren't funny. The uncles were exceedingly lucky they lived..." (p. 55)). The former would be of greatest interest to young readers who liked the processes and procedures in historical children's books a la Little House in the Big Woods. The latter is rather too blatant for an adult audience.
More practical editing would have been a big benefit. The writing liberally uses parenthetical remarks, but sometimes uses footnotes in the same way or for the same style of aside. Only one method of marginalia is needed. Many terms are italicized and appear in the glossary at the back, but some are also explained in footnotes, appearing in both places. An instruction directing readers to the glossary would he been sufficient. Some words are italicized but have neither a footnote nor a glossary entry (ex: parathas, p. 44). The glossary is a little thin and could certainly be more robust. Rather than a teaser chapter for the author's sequel publication, an index would be more useful.
Program topics: none suggested
Discussion prompts:
- [see questions given in the preface, p. xi]
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews