Frank Coates

Here is a link to the website of Frank Coates. Frank is an Australian author who, like Tony Park from a previous post, writes novels set in Africa. While Tony spends time in southern Africa, Frank is in eastern Africa.

The following is a synopsis of his novel Beyond Mombasa from his website:

In 1897, Ronald Preston, a young civil engineer, takes his new bride, Florence, to Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast of Africa to begin construction of a railway line through an unchartered wilderness.

But Preston realises the Uganda Railway, later branded the ‘Lunatic Line’, is no place for a woman. Ahead lie hostile tribes, dense jungles and brutal thorn-bush deserts where his wife would be the only white woman among ten thousand men.

In the four years building the railway he must overcome political intrigues in far-away London, his taciturn caravan master who is haunted by memories of his hot-blooded woman, and a fellow engineer whose obsession with the man-eaters of Tsavo leads him into dangerous ground.

When his crewmembers are brutally killed, Preston stalks a predator more treacherous than the lions.

Based on a true story, Beyond Mombasa explores Florence Preston’s journey of discovery across Kenya as well as in her marriage, and her husband’s seduction by the power of Africa.