Pretty is as pretty does or rather beautiful is as…or is it beauty is only skin deep? No matter how you look at it, beauty will only carry you so far, because at some point you will reveal your true self once you open your mouth. Mufaro has two equally beautiful daughters named Nyasha and Manyara. He loves them both and believes their beauty transcends their personalities such that only a king could choose between the two of them.
Nyasha is kind and loving while, unbeknownst to Mufaro, his daughter Manyara is spoiled and selfish, and cautious to never behave like that around her father. It is the villagers and Manyara’s own sister, Nyasha, who experience Manyara’s difficult and unkind behavior. Because of her love for her father, Nyasha never reveals the treatment she receives from Manyara, which only goes to her credit as a loving daughter whose beauty also reigns in her heart.
As you read the book, you get to see examples of Nyasha’s gentle spirit and joy for life through her hard work and song. During the course of one day, she comes across a friendly garden snake that later becomes a constant companion for her as she tends to her garden. Later in the book, we learn how important this snake truly becomes to Nyasha.
When the king announces he is looking for a wife, Mufaro immediately packs to travel the next day to the city with a wedding party made up of friends from the village. He believes, without certainty, that one of his daughters will be chosen to be queen. Mufaro is not alone in his belief that one of them will be chosen, and Manyara thinks it should be her, so she sets out the night before the wedding party to appear first before the king.
On Manyara’s trek to the city, she comes across a hungry boy with whom she shares nothing, ignores the advice of a wise old woman and later disrespects a “man with his head under his arm.” Manyara, who is determined to make it to the city before her sister, is concerned only with herself.
The wedding party leaves the following morning convinced Manyara is already on her way and comes across the same people whom she also crossed. This time, the boy is fed and the old woman is heeded to by Nyasha, which leads Nyasha on a different path to the city; she never crosses the headless man.
Once arriving in the city, they are greeted by Manyara who comes running out of the palace crying hysterically about a “snake with five heads.” Nyasha leaves her sister in the care of her father and proceeds into the palace only to be greeted by her gardening companion, the garden snake who reveals his true identity and all the other ways he appeared to Nyasha.
A real prince can determine true beauty and only desires a real princess with a kind and loving heart inside and out. Who do you think he choses?
Amazon: Murfaro’s Beautiful Daughter’s
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