Elon Musk's Mother Wrote a Book About Family, Life in Africa and Posing Nude. We Summarize the Most Interesting Parts

How to survive in the desert and build two diametrically different careers.

Penguin Random House has published a book by Maye Musk, a model, dietitian and mother of three successful entrepreneurs. "A Woman Makes a Plan" is half autobiography, half motivational guide. We have read it and are retelling the most interesting parts: how Maye Musk escaped hyenas, crocodiles and a tyrannical husband, raised Elon, and passed herself off as a 70-year-old pregnant woman.

Maye Musk's parents had their own airplane. No, not some business jet, but a tiny Bellanca that her father, Joshua Haldeman, spontaneously traded for a car during a trip. Along with the plane, nicknamed "Winnie" after Maye's mother, Winnifred, the Haldeman family adopted a new creed: "Live by taking risks and by being careful." The Haldemans took risks by going on family flights across Canada, the US, Australia and Europe without GPS or radio contact, but were careful, meticulously planning every flight and food supply. Maye and her twin sister Kaye first flew with their parents at three months old: newspapers in South Africa, where the family lived, published their photo captioned "flying twins."

Every summer the family set out in search of a mythical city in the Kalahari. Maye's father had read in a traveler's book about how he had discovered the ruins of an ancient city in the desert. The Haldemans stocked up on water, put five young children in a truck and set off to explore a new stretch of the Kalahari Desert. Maye writes that she was never afraid of such trips: "After I was told that a hyena could bite off my nose, I simply wrapped myself more tightly in my sleeping bag." Her youngest brother Lee, "the tastiest morsel," was allowed to sleep in the car. Once a scorpion stung Winnifred; another time an ostrich chased Maye's sister Lynn. Maye once jumped into a river to retrieve a guinea fowl her brother had shot and felt something moving beneath her: she had stepped on a crocodile. Once fuel got into the drinking water tank, and everyone had to drink water with petrol until the end of the trip.

Maye had to learn Afrikaans to become a dietitian. At home the Haldeman family spoke English, but when it was time to enter university, Maye learned that the coveted specialty, dietetics, was only offered at a university where instruction was in Afrikaans. "In my final year the stress was unceasing. I didn't understand how hard it would be to study physics and chemistry in a non-native language," she writes. However, after graduating, the young woman found that her diploma was enough for her to immediately open her own practice.

Maye's husband organized their wedding by deception. As her boyfriend, he cheated on her, but a year after their breakup he apologized and proposed. When Maye refused him, he went to her parents in Pretoria and lied that she had agreed. Since the main means of communication in South Africa in the 70s was still mail, they took his word for it, and since Maye's sister was also getting married, her parents sent out invitations to everyone for a double wedding. Maye found out when she started receiving telegrams of congratulations. Feeling anxious about her loneliness and appearance, she decided to give her ex-boyfriend a chance, and quickly regretted it.

Elon, Tosca and Kimbal's father constantly resorted to violence. During their honeymoon in Europe, he did nothing but read Playboy (the magazine was banned in South Africa!) while Maye cleaned and sorted things, and it was then that he first hit her. Later he made his pregnant wife repaint his plane and forbade her to stop even when her labor pains started. When Maye's father died in a plane crash, her husband asked how much money they would get, and was furious to learn that the inheritance went to her mother. As Elon grew older, he tried to protect his mother by grabbing his fighting father's legs, but it was precisely because of Elon and the younger children that Maye did not dare leave her husband: he promised to slash her face and shoot each of the children in the knees, so that she would have to raise three toddlers in wheelchairs. When South Africa passed a new divorce law, Maye took the risk and dissolved the marriage, and when her husband began tracking her down at friends' apartments, she obtained a court restraining order.

Another suitor decided to repeat the feats of Maye's former husband. When she turned down his proposal, he nevertheless organized a party to celebrate their engagement and even began building a house with separate rooms for his children and the bride's children. In response to her refusals, he threatened to kill himself. ("It seems I attract the same type of man," she writes.) In their life together he also turned out to be a tyrant, constantly persuading the already slim Maye that she needed to lose a little more weight, to the point that she began eating ice cream constantly in his presence to drive off her suitor. The stress led to her developing an eating disorder and weighing more than 90 kg. "It is better to be alone than to live in fear. It is better to face financial difficulties than to suffer violence every day," writes Maye, who never married again and prefers to live with her beloved dog.

In South Africa she considered herself an old model at 28! Starting to do part-time modelling work while at university and becoming a finalist in "Miss South Africa," Maye did not think about making a career in this field. Professionals convinced her as early as age 15 that models stop being in demand at 18. But since she did not seek runway work, preferring advertising shoots, Maye remained in demand: clients needed more mature models to make photos look realistic. "Once on a shoot I played a grandmother. I was forty-two years old!" writes Maye. After one presentation, where all the models, both women and men, were older, a colleague joked that she was the only one who had not been in bed with him. "I took part in a mattress advertising shoot with the other ladies," he explained. By then Musk considered herself the "queen of Sears bathrobes," without even dreaming of fashion weeks.

"A beautiful woman who dresses monstrously," is how her future friend and stylist Julia Perry described Maye Musk when she first saw Maye teaching modelling courses. Maye Musk was not used to dressing stylishly: first her mother sewed clothes for all the children, then she sat down at the sewing machine herself for fashionable flared trousers and bell-shaped dresses, and at shows stylists took care of the clothes. Even looking like a style icon in a Hypebeast shoot with youth streetwear brands, Musk still believes she has not learned to dress herself: "Find yourself a friend who dresses stylishly and take her along when you go shopping," she advises in her book.

All her children started working while still teenagers. Maye and her sister began working at their father's chiropractic clinic when they were 12. Mornings and evenings they served as administrators, taking calls from clients, making them tea and developing X-rays. "We were treated like adults who could be trusted," she writes, believing that this is what allowed all the Haldeman children to become entrepreneurs, and all of Maye's children as well. Her daughter Tosca began teaching etiquette and choreography at her mother's modelling school at just eight years old, and Elon, at 12, developed a computer game called BLASTAR for which he was paid $500. Maye says she never even checked her children's homework; she simply let them pursue their interests. (Today Tosca is a director and founder of the streaming service Passionflix, and Kimbal is a restaurateur.)

15-year-old Tosca Musk sold her mother's house without her knowledge. When Elon and Kimbal decided to get an education in Canada, Maye went along on a brief reconnaissance trip to find out whether she could pursue both of her careers there. But when she returned to Johannesburg three weeks later, she discovered that Tosca had already found buyers for their house, all the furniture and the car. All Maye could do was sign the documents and admit that they should all move to Canada. "If a member of your family makes a sensible suggestion, listen to it," she writes. Feisty Tosca did not even receive a reprimand. Moreover, the move turned out to be good for Maye: in South Africa she had already exhausted her career opportunities, and her concerns about her limited French proved unfounded, as she found work in English-speaking Toronto.

Maye never turns down help. One would think strong women only talk about relying solely on themselves, but not Maye Musk. When flying to Canada, the airline lost her suitcase with her belongings. Being in a difficult financial situation and renting a one-bedroom apartment with three children, she could not afford new clothes and wore jackets handed down by her Canadian relatives. When she came to glossy shoots in her South African sandals, local models listed thrift stores where shoes could be bought for $19. At the airport they kept throwing up their hands. Once a new acquaintance, hearing that Maye was wearing Elon's outerwear, went with her to the airport. "I'm her lawyer. Find her luggage," he declared. "He was an accountant," Maye writes. "The next day my suitcase was found in Mexico City and returned." "Accept help from strangers; it will make you happy," she advises.

Elon Musk edited his mother's book on dietetics. Maye's eldest son turned out to be not only a valuable employee for Microsoft but also a strict editor. When Maye was offered the chance to write a book on dietetics, she composed a lengthy manuscript "about calories, metabolism, nutrients – all sorts of intriguing things." But when Elon took a printout to read during a joint trip to New York, he delivered a verdict: deadly boring. "Why do twenty-five clients come to you every day?" he asked. "For nutrition advice," his mother replied. "Then write them nutrition advice." Kimbal edited the finished book five times. Tosca says she did it six times. "I am happy to have a family in which people help each other become successful," writes Maye. Elon later created her first professional website for his mother, in exchange for a lecture on dietetics that she gave to his colleagues.

At 61 she appeared on the cover of a magazine nude, and pregnant. "I am not afraid of rejection or insults. When I worked as a model, I was turned down nine times out of ten," writes Maye. It was especially hard for her when she stopped dyeing her hair: even her own agents did not want to work with a model with gray hair. She had to look for work on her own. And she found it, even after gaining weight: when a demand arose for realistic-looking models, Maye became South Africa's only plus-size and mature model in one person. At 61 she was offered the chance to pose nude for the cover of New York in the "Demi Moore pose." After consulting with her children, she concluded that it was a respectable magazine, so why not? The artists also photoshopped another model's pregnant belly onto her: the article was about women giving birth after 50. "They used harsh lighting, and I looked every bit of 70," writes Musk. The photos went viral.

"Being 71 is wonderful," writes Maye now. "You simply need to always make a plan for yourself. It may not work, and then you just need to make another one."

Marina Moynihan, TK Media