A substantial portion of the book is taken directly from Fossey’s own writings and relatively little of the rest has Mowat’s agenda. It’s a little less like a biography and more like reading her diary as a result.

She was a strong-minded woman with immeasurable compassion for her animals who was put in an incredibly volatile and complex situation and expected to solve it. I don’t agree with some of the things she said and did, but she knew so much less than we know now about how animals learn, and she had so little external support, and it’s hard to read about her agony when poachers killed one of the gorillas she had befriended and not, in some way, understand her resulting decision to drive them out of the park by any means necessary.

I came away admiring her, if not agreeing with her.