Smoke That Thunders

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Having stolen his mother’s credit card, 16-year-old David Livingstone
of Kitsilano, British Columbia, is flying to Tanzania. Like a good
mystery writer, Reece initially provides only clues to David’s
motivations for this trip. Gradually, we learn about David’s
girlfriend, Jackie Polanski, and their Grade 9 English teacher, James
MacGregor, and are left to draw our own conclusions.

Arrested as a runaway at the Dar es Salaam airport, David escapes. His
destination is Zambia’s Victoria Falls, or Smoke that Thunders as the
locals call it. Like Stanley finding the missionary/explorer
Livingstone, David must find himself, and the symbolic place he has
chosen is the falls that Livingstone named. Pursued by embassy officials
and police, David heads for the Zambian border on a highway nicknamed
“Hell Run” because vehicles are routinely hijacked. En route, he
encounters an amazing cast of characters, including the Hon. Felix
Ngoma, Tanzania’s Minister of Highways; Father Manon, a priest from
Chicoutimi, Quebec; Sadarji and Albert, a pair of tire thieves; and
clownish Police Sergeant Buboka.

The two most significant characters are Changwe, a one-legged man, and
his teenage daughter, Pepsi. David’s father had disappeared five years
before, and Changwe becomes a temporary substitute, who, for his own
reasons, joins David in his quest to reach the falls. The Zambian
portion of the pair’s trip initially reads like a Keystone Cops
episode until tragedy strikes, and then David, in a stolen aircraft,
completes the journey with Changwe’s body.

Departing from the typical adolescent novel, particularly in place
setting and the role of adult characters, Smoke That Thunders speaks to
adolescents’ search for self-definition and will appeal to teens who
enjoy a more challenging read. Recommended.