MARK OF THE LION, the debut by Suzanne Arruda, is a departure from the settings of past historical fiction novels I consider myself fortunate to have read. This tale of history opens on the battlefields of World War I in the France of 1918.

Jade del Cameron, an American from New Mexico , drives an ambulance for the French army. She is an intrepid young woman who faces the mortar fire of the front lines, fixes mechanical beasts who have survived one trip farther than their four wheels normally allow, handles a firearm as well as any man, and suffers the shock of soldiers wounded, some mortally, in the last throes of life.

One of these is pilot David Worthy.

Here was a brave man who asked to marry her – only to hear her answer ‘no' – and now she must see his plane shot down by the Germans. His final request, after she pulls him free of the wreckage, was to ‘Find my brother.'

Yet, David Worthy has no brother.

When Jade visits his mother, she denies the supposition – leaving a cold, dead end to the quest. However, through this visit, Jade manages to come across the name of an attorney, a Mr. Jacobs, who acts on behalf of David's father, Gil Worthy. Apparently, Gil Worthy spent four years in British East Africa seeking his fortune. When he contracted malaria, he returned to his wife in London , only to make another trip back to Africa in 1915 to find the son he sired while there. Mysteriously, he died at that time under circumstances rather suspicious. David was, apparently, planning to follow his father to Africa , but then the war intervened.

Now it is up to Jade. Find David's brother; and discover who killed his father.

What I, perhaps, enjoyed most about MARK OF THE LION was the adventure Jade finds herself on, wrapped around the mystery she is sent to solve, encountering along the way a grand collection of characters that make the ride enticing with its flavor of Africa during that era. There was romanticism one could not escape, and of which I believe is captured quite effectively here.

I could not help thinking of the Meryl Street/Robert Redford film, “Out Of Africa”, which I believe was set in approximately the same time period. Suzanne Arruda captures it, even to the point where you can feel the sweltering, dusty heat of the African climate upon your brow and the threat of animal attack breathing across the land.

I even detected a measured suffusion of the British accent – and the American lack thereof – in the dialogue between the characters. Though the words are the same, the manners in which the characters deliver them speak a taste of the different cultures superbly.

Then the story comes into play.

MARK OF THE LION is Jade arriving in Nairobi as writer/photographer for the magazine ‘The Traveler'. She is to do a story on Africa . Her stealth purpose of finding David's brother and his father's killer is nothing she pronounces – at least not at first. As she begins to meet people, and as old friends join her exploits, her central focus becomes clearer – almost to her detriment.

She shoots her first hyena, which brings her into the sights of the laibon ( the tribal witch ) who sent it to terrorize a local tribe. He sends a lion after her, but she is protected by a tribal chief and his smelly ointment, which somehow repels lions. Nevertheless, her skills with a rifle are still needed, as are her English friends, if the dangerous terrain is ever to be survived and her quest for David fulfilled.

There is a real sense of the environment here, and that gives rise to a story where no clichéd format follows. In many ways, the story is Africa itself. It is the adventure of the land. One cannot predict what is to happen or even when the arrival of the end will appear on the next turned page.

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