Woman in the Mists

"Initially Mowat approached Dian Fossey’s story as an ordinary biographer. He was given access to her most personal notes and diaries, and, as he read her own account of her life, her spirit entered his psyche. In the end, he acted more as an editor of Dian’s own words than as his own storyteller, and he says in his own foreword that her diaries and journals and the words of others who had known her became ‘as achingly familiar to me as if we were of one blood. I would be happy if we were’. He never met her in the flesh but he saw who she really was and his book is the best of any written about her. As to her death, it is thought in many circles that Europeans organised her murder, as she was not playing ball with certain organisations that had alternative ideas about looking after the mountain gorillas. The main theory is that a black man she knew was then paid to do it."