"[A] beautiful and loving portrait" - The Boston Globe

"Living on the fringe" is how Robyn Scott's mother describes the family's unconventional approach to marriage, child-rearing, education, and housekeeping in Botswana. Mrs. Scott, an advocate of home-schooling, believed that work and play should be indistinguishable, that routine ruined creativity and television stunted the imagination.

Education included being read to from story books, as well everything else - painting a room, building a radio, making puppets. Dr. Scott, a doctor who piloted his plane to rural clinics in the area, exhausted from the poverty, sickness and superstition of his patients, left the education of the three children to his wife.

Pathologically optimistic, she allowed the three children unbounded opportunities to explore, discover, and imagine.

With Damien and Lulu, her younger brother and sister, oldest child Robyn grows up never knowing boredom, capable of endless invention and amusement, enthusiastic for adventure, and eager to be thrilled. It is no surprise that all three children grow up to be interesting adults, but it is a surprise that they bear no ill will toward their parents - no shame, embarrassment, or longing for the ease of conformity.