In Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness , Alexandra Fuller returns to Africa and to her unforgettable family. At the heart of this family, and central to the lifeblood of her latest story, is Fuller's iconically courageous mother, Nicola (or Nicola Fuller of Central Africa, as she sometimes prefers to be known). We see Nicola as an irrepressible child in western Kenya, then with the man who fell in love with her, Tim Fuller. We follow the couple as they hopscotch the continent, restlessly trying to establish a home, from Kenya to Rhodesia to Zambia, even returning to England briefly. War, hardship and tragedy seem to follow them, even as Nicola fights to hold on to her children, her land and her sanity. But just when it seems that Nicola has been broken entirely by Africa, it is the African earth itself that revives her.