and coping with the hardships of field science, including rainy-season floods, wasp stings and two bouts of malaria. Her memoir and first book, Chasing Lemurs: My Journey into the Heart of Madagascar (2021), chronicled her nineteen months studying groups of endangered lemurs in an isolated forest region. McGoogan lives in Guelph, Ontario.
She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Sisters of the Jungle: Women Who Shaped the Science of Wild Primates, and shared the following:
Page 99 of Sisters of the Jungle: The Trailblazing Women Who Shaped the Study of Wild Primates finds us in 1966 with Dian Fossey, preparing for her long-term research on the mountain gorillas of the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda. Still green to scientific research, Fossey had been selected by charismatic archaeologist Louis Leakey to study the mountain gorillas to learn more about how our early human ancestors may have lived.Visit Keriann McGoogan's website.
This page captures a pivotal moment in Fossey’s journey: she is buzzing with excitement as she prepares for her field research. Fossey receives help from Jane Goodall and Alan Root, and is warned of growing political instability in the region. Unbeknownst to her, as a young woman without experience in the field, her qualifications are being called into question. This blend of passion, risk, and scrutiny reflects the tensions that are at the heart of Sisters of the Jungle.
Page 99 also offers a glimpse into Fossey’s character: her stubbornness and fierce commitment to her work, even in the face of doubt and danger. These same traits would result in her groundbreaking conservation achievements, her controversial legacy, and her still-unsolved murder in 1985. In this moment, as Fossey embarks on her fieldwork, we see the seeds of her successes and her struggles.
This page exemplifies a pattern faced by women scientists in the early stages of primatology: they venture into the unknown, filled with hope, only to encounter complex realities that test their resilience, values, and sense of self. Promise and peril coexist on this page, as they do throughout Sisters of the Jungle.
Sisters of the Jungle explores why primatology became a uniquely female science and how the abundance of women primatologists has shaped the discipline. Fossey is just one of the many intrepid women who—in the early days of primatology—travelled to far-off places to learn more about wild primates and ourselves. Page 99 is a microcosm of the key themes in Sisters of the Jungle: gender, science, courage, ethics, and discovery. In this single page, we glimpse the early optimism, personal conviction, and ethical complexities that shape the stories of all the women featured in Sisters of the Jungle. Like Fossey on page 99, they all once stood at the threshold of transformation.
--Marshal Zeringue
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