Probing the question: "Are we ready to accept a human-ape hybrid in our midst?" What if humans were able to reproduce with other great apes? What would the hybrid offspring look like? Act like? Think like? And how would humans respond? Would such creatures be allowed to live among us? Or would they be put under a microscope in a zoo or research facility? Lucinda Gerson is an outspoken, free-spirited working-class single mother. Lively and unpredictable, she's the sort of person you might call "one of a kind." Her child Bonbon is quite literally one of a kind. When Lucinda spends the money she has inherited from an uncle on a trip to visit her anthropologist sister in the Congo, she comes back pregnant. Lucy and Bonbon is the story of mother and child, and of the controversy that swirls around them over the course of the child's first fourteen years. It is a story of freedom and captivity, of love and friendship, of borders and of border crossings, and of what it means to be a human animal.
"… a fascinating exploration of ideas. The prose is a joy to read and the two main characters are unforgettable. In Bonbon, the 'hybrid,' LePan has created a voice that is intelligent, self-aware, empathetic and observant, and the fact that he views humanity from both the inside and outside offers an amazing perspective. Lucy and Bonbon is compulsively readable as it builds to its extraordinary an
Deborah Willis, author of The Dark and Other Love Stories and Vanishing
