Jennifer Stern is a multi-published non-fiction writer. She writes mostly about travel, food, culture and coffee, and A big Hand for the Spirits is her first foray into fiction. Not surprisingly, it draws heavily on her travel experiences, and she has visited every place mentioned in the narrative, and partaken of most of the activities – the rafting at Vic Falls, game viewing in Luangwa, diving in Lake Malawi, driving the Great East Road, catching local buses in Malawi, and walking long distances between tiny towns. But Spirits is most definitely a work of fiction, not a travelogue, a memoir or a thinly disguised autobiography. (Jen has never been stalked by murderous gangsters, and hopes that remains true in perpetuity.) She lives in Cape Town with a hyperactive donava (Dog of Noble and Varied Ancestry).
