Fortine woman featured in new book

A new book by a Canadian writer tells the story of how two Washington women are transforming lives in Kenya.

Kris Coffin Stevenson’s “Beneath the Baobab Tree: Where Poverty Dies and Hope Begins,” is the story of how Debra Akre and Jeana King of Bellingham, Wash., spearheaded educational reform in the African nation. King grew up in Fortine and graduated from Lincoln County High School in Eureka.

Akre and King undertook their efforts in 2004 by not only challenging the way schools were run in Kenya but instilling in the poverty-stricken village of Nakuru a notion that its potential to educate their youths and establish a means of getting them out of poverty was already present: It just needed to be realized.

So successful was the little school that in its first year, when its graduates competed in nationwide exams (which are the key to opportunity to achieve higher education in Kenya), they placed among the highest in the nation — and they’ve maintained their success ever since.

The journey that led to that success is at the heart of “Beneath the Baobab Tree,” which was published by Stevenville’s Stonedale Press Publishing Co. It is available at www.stoneydale.com or by calling (406) 777-2729.