The true story of Africa's richest goldmine and the discovering Geologist. Treasure maps. Espionage and intrigue. Betrayed trust. Attempted murder. Gold found and lost. A Canadian family spinning out of control under the dark cloud of conflict and mental illness. A son's struggle for reconciliation with his parents and his past. This adventure began in the late 1950s when my father, James Clinton Snell, was a geology student in Fairbanks, Alaska. One evening, while studying calculus, his friend slid a cartoon drawing under his door. The image depicted my father straddling a donkey, with his boots planted on the ground. He was riding up a dirt road with his prospecting pick. At the end of the road was a gold mine in the clouds. Beams of light spread upward to a musical caption that read, "There's a goldmine in the sky far away." In 1981, years after my father graduated with his geology degree, a picture was taken of him in Mali, West Africa. In the photo he's straddling a donkey, with his boots planted on the ground and his arm around a local miner. At the end of that road was the place where he discovered one of the richest goldmines in history.