First Chapter, First Paragraph & Teaser Tuesday: Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh

First Chapter, First Paragraph, is a meme hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea.  Anyone can play — just copy the first paragraph of the first chapter (or prologue) and include a picture of the book cover. Leave your link at Bibliophile by the Sea.  I read about this book in two different places recently and decided I had to get it.  It’s historical fiction which I find, to my surprise, is becoming a favourite genre of mine.  Here’s the opening from Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh:

1952, Mombasa, Kenya

The steward has said we will dock at 9:00 o’clock, but I am too excited to sleep, and I walk onto deck in the dark, long before the sun comes up, watching for the first sight of land. I pull a packet of cigarettes from my coat pocket, light one and inhale, smoke curling up into the warm night sky. My heart beats out a rhythm born of long anticipation. After six years I am finally coming home.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, now being hosted by Ambrosia of  The Purple Booker.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!  So, from the same memoir:

I realize that I like Nathaniel Logan. Years of boarding school have taught me to be wary of people who hold themselves too easily to the common cause, but he seems to keep himself just enough apart from people to make his own judgment. p.16

Harold does not say anything more, but the color has rushed to his cheeks, mottling his pale skin red, and I sense that by asking about Nathaniel he has given her the upper hand, a clear target on an old battleground. p. 54

Would you keep reading?  I recently read Child of the River which was about the beginning of apartheid in S. Africa and it was not only an amazing character study of a poor white girl growing into adulthood at that time but also gave a lot of insight into that particular time period, which of course, was its purpose.  When I saw this book was about the Mau Mau revolution in Kenya, it seemed like a good follow-up.  Have you read this book, have it on your list, or think you might like to read it after reading this post?  Leave a comment and a link to your First Chapter, First Paragraph and Teaser Tuesday page.