The African Queen

By Ron Dawes

This saga follows the story of Elizabeth, a young British woman born and raised in Shanghai in the 1890s. At eighteen, she marries a young missionary who is assigned to East Africa and struggles to discover and enjoy her sexuality amid the expectations of decorum for a young British woman in the puritanical age of the Victorian era. She knows there must be more to love and marriage than is provided by her devoted, yet hapless husband Aston, who seems unwilling or unable to fulfill her needs.

The account of the colonization of Africa from 1900 through the end of the first World War serves as the backdrop for the story, which introduces a rich variety of characters, including the crusty old trader, John Brown, the dashing young Captain Waltham, and the young missionary couple, Thomas and Jane Faulk.

The descriptions of Elizabeth's lusty adventures are detailed, and meant for a mature audience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Dawes
• Release date: Apr 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311609298

Ron Dawes

Writing these stories provides me an outlet to express my innermost fantasies. I love hearing from readers who have been moved by my stories. Feel free to drop me a note anytime. Many of my stories are based on my fantasies. Some of the stories are based on the fantasies of others that have contacted me. But all of them are fantasies. We have no control over our fantasies, and many of them will always be just that; fantasies, not real. I don't necessarily condone the behavior of my characters; some of them are a bit lecherous, I'm afraid. Some are rowdy. And some might just be a little nasty. But it takes all kinds. I believe that men, deep down, have a strong need to worship and adore their lover. I believe that women, deep down, have a strong need to be worshiped and adored by their lover. Most of my stories reflect those beliefs.

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The African Queen

By Ron Dawes

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Text Copyright 2014 Ron Dawes

All characters are fictional, and, where involved in adult situations, are over the age of 18.

Elizabeth completed finishing school in June of 1898, but she wasn’t scheduled to return home until August. That’s when acquaintances of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Longmont, would be travelling back to Shanghai.  It would be unthinkable for a young woman to sail unescorted.  While she looked forward to seeing friends and family, she wasn’t sorry that she would miss at least part of the sweltering Shanghai summer.  Just shy of her eighteenth birthday, her education complete, she was now prepared for one thing, and one thing only; to marry an English gentleman.

The day she arrived at the boarding school, at the age of fifteen, was the first time in her life she had been in England.  She was very excited when she arrived, visiting the land of her heritage that she had only heard about.  Once, in her first year, the girls had been taken on an outing to Kent.  It was the first time in her life that she had experienced anything like it.  She had never taken a breath of pristine, clear air in her lifetime, or been in a pastoral environment.  The beauty was so much of a contrast with Shanghai or London, it almost brought her to tears.

For the rest of her first year in England, she fantasized about marrying an English gentleman and settling down in a large estate somewhere like Kent.  She had grown up reading the romantic novels of Browning, Hardy and the Bronte’s, and fancied herself the matron of a Thrushcross Grange in the wild moors of Yorkshire or the mysterious Thornfield Hall.

Quickly enough, however, she learned that it was an impossible dream.  She would always be seen by people raised in Britain as a provincial, barely English at all, because of her colonial upbringing.  The subtle reminders she received in polite company made her certain that she would never be accepted as an equal or considered suitably marriageable.  An Englishman with a job similar to her father’s clerical job with the foreign office would have been considered relatively low in England.  Rather than living in a large house with servants, her mother would probably have had to work, either as a shop girl or a servant.  Now she understood why her parents had never come back to England.

Her family was able to live a comparatively extravagant life in Shanghai.  Her father’s friendships with members of the merchant’s guild, which he nurtured through his membership in The Shanghai Club, allowed him to be invited to join their co-op.  The fact that the co-op invested in the opium trade, which was extremely lucrative, was an open secret.  Though the opium trade was forbidden by the crown, the ban was rarely enforced.  So long as the right people on the Shanghai Municipal Council were bribed, and as long as the trade wasn’t so large as to threaten the Qing Bang, or Green Gang, the local mobsters that controlled much of the opium and prostitution trades, it was allowed to go on.