The Lion Behind the Anthill by Gill Shaddick is a captivating memoir about love, adventure and travel to exotic places.

Gill met her soulmate Mike in Central Africa. He was a reckless, optimistic and adorable biologist who matched her thirst for adventure. They set out on an itinerant life of work and travel where nothing ever quite went to plan. In Iran, they lived an expat life of luxury; in Sudan they made do with no running water or electricity; in Zimbabwe, they had a fishing business on Lake Kariba in the middle of a war zone; in Scotland, they farmed rabbits on the remote Galloway peninsula.

After surviving those challenges, they moved to Australia where Mike was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. While they shared the same goal – to regain Mike's health – their approaches set them as far apart as strangers in an unfamiliar terrain.