The unique character of Stanley's Way proceeds from its author's long fascination with the life of a man and the lure of a continent. Even as a boy Thomas Sterling dreamed of following Stanley's way into the Africa of legend, mystery, danger and challenge. A brief visit in 1956 confirmed his deep affinity for the land and its people, and he returned soon, this time to enter Central Africa and begin the joining of dream to reality.

This is the record of that journey. It presents two vivid and contrasting but skillfully interwoven pictures of Africa: the land as it was when Stanley first explored it in 1871, and the country today, just awakening to its enormous potential. Sterling's view of Stanley is clear and unprejudiced, but informed always with his sense of the man's true stature. So too he sees clearly the life around him as he travels from Zanzibar to Stanleyville. Against the background of the legendary events of the nineteenth century he paints arresting portraits of British officials, African leaders, Dutch Catholic priests, a Belgian psychiatrist and, most movingly, of Epis, the tall, appealing African girl who befriended Sterling in Stanleyville and taught him so much of the warmth and dignity of the African character.

Stanley's Way is a various book--a journal of exploration of past and present, a story of romance fulfilled, a memorial to a man who has commanded the imagination of generations. Above all, it is the work of a novelist who is also a superb reporter, and he provides an experience as arresting as it is unusual.