Neely, a white man from Mississippi, and his wife, Vita, a black woman from Detroit, had fallen in love as next-door neighbors while living in Detroit. In 1997, after a four-year posting in Eastern Europe, Neely was given his most difficult assignment: covering the wars and the AIDS epidemic for all of Africa.

As a foreign correspondent, Neely Tucker had seen his share of horrors, having covered wars in Bosnia, Rwanda, and the Middle East. Despite these experiences, nothing prepared him for the ravages of AIDS throughout Africa. “The steady stream of violence has worn away my natural sense of compassion to the point where I could cover almost any horror but feel very little about anything at all.”

With a strong undercurrent of the racial complexities that Neely and Vita’s backgrounds bring to the story, as well as the ethical dilemma faced by Neely as he tries to balance telling the truth in his journalism with the fact that the truth can get them all killed, Love in the Driest Season comes barreling to its conclusion like a thriller.

Upon his return to the United States, Neely Tucker accepted a position from the Washington Post, but gave up his career as a foreign correspondent in order to be at home with Chipo. Vita Tucker decided to switch careers after her experiences in Zimbabwe and she now works as the East Africa project coordinator for World Vision specializing in children’s issues and HIV. Chipo Katherine Tucker is now a vibrant and energetic seven-year-old.