[The Searching Spirit: An Autobiography] is a unique story, told with the directness and simplicity of all [Joy Adamson's] writings: the story of a generous, creative and artistic person, with a great fund of affection for her fellow creatures, who has devoted her life to observing them as individuals in order to discover how they think, feel and behave, to recording the results with brush and pen, and to pleading their cause in the world at large. But this book is not a treatise, or in any sense a polemic. It is an adventure tale, the personal story of a woman of courage, gaiety and zest for life. 'A day in the bush is never dull,' she remarks. Nor is a page in her autobiography. (p. 15)

Elspeth Huxley, in her foreword to The Searching Spirit by Joy Adamson (© 1978 Elsa Limited), Collins and Harvill Press, 1978, pp. 13-15.