The burning shore - Wilbur A. Smith

'Centaine screamed and drove the point of her stave down into the jaws with all her strength. She felt the sharpened end bite into the soft pink mucous membrane in the back of its throat, saw the spurt of scarlet blood, and then the lion locked its jaws on the stave and with a toss of its flying mane ripped it out of her hands and sent it windmilling out and down to hit the earth below.'

The passionate love of a beautiful French aristocrat for a courageous South African aviator is begun and extinguished in the blazing skies of war-torn France. But Centaine de Thiry is bent on realizing some of the dreams which she and Michael Courtney had shared - and sets out to seek a future for his unborn child in the country of Michael's birth. But in a monumental odyssey of disaster and adventure she must first brave all the combined terrors of war, shipwreck, thirst, fever and the burning vastnesses of Namibia's Skeleton Coast before she sees another living soul...