Ray Campbell runs his own risk assessment firm in New York. But, twenty years ago, he was a well-intentioned aid worker dedicated to improving conditions in Lubanda, a newly independent African country.
When a friend from his time in Lubanda is found murdered in a New York alley, Ray is forced to reconsider his year of living dangerously. Signs suggest that this most recent tragedy is rooted in the far more distant one of Martine Aubert; the only woman Ray ever truly loved, whose fate he’d sealed in a moment of grievous error.
Martine Aubert was a white, native Lubandan farmer whose dream for her homeland starkly conflicted with those charged with its so-called development. But Ray’s failure to understand Martine’s commitment to her country had placed a noose around her neck, one tightened by a circle of vicious men, cruel taunts, and whistling machetes.
It is Ray’s return to the passion he’d once felt for Martine that makes A Dancer in the Dust an enthralling and moving story of two loves: Ray’s love for Martine Aubert, and Martine’s love for a homeland that did not love her back.