Julie Ward was among the group of tourists I travelled with in 1988 on the Hobo Trans-Africa truck. We set off from Dover in the freezing February weather and arrived in Nairobi five months later. All the way from Europe to East Africa we slept in small but sturdy tents that we pitched by the side of the road, and we cooked meals over an open fire in canteen saucepans.

We all liked Julie. She was gentle without being a pushover, quiet without being introverted. While the raging tinnitus in her ears prevented her from easily participating in conversations when our noise was in full flow, she made several close friends and talked with excitement about her plans to set up a new life in Kenya.

When our truck got stuck in the mud trying to cross the River Niger in Mali, Julie and a few others set up a makeshift clinic for the mothers who brought infants with conjunctivitis, or needed antiseptic wipes and painkillers. We did not carry anything stronger than aspirin, TCP and plasters on the truck.

Julie's gentle manner and quiet way of engaging with people made the news of her violent death all the more difficult for us to comprehend. I heard it on a Radio Four newscast while sitting in a traffic jam in London. Was this the same Julie Ward, I wondered? I could not imagine what had caused this to happen. I read all the newspapers. Again and again, there was the photograph of Julie holding the orphaned chimpanzee. All over the media in Europe and East Africa, a multiplicity of stories was mapped onto this unassuming woman.

Julie crossed continents in search of a new beginning. That life did not have the chance to begin. Grace A. Musila has captured the complicated layers of speculation that accompanied Julie's death and shows how Julie was reconstructed again and again by different commentators, each one striving to understand what really happened in the Maasai Mara. But this book does not attempt to offer a definitive truth or to solve the mystery of Julie's murder. It is a tribute to the author that, in amongst all the criss-crossing and contradictory stories, Julie's personality shines through the pages of this book.