This novel tells the story of the Vorsters and their heriditary South African farm spanning more than two decades of the transition from apartheid to democracy. Inherently good people whose views and prejudices inevitably lead to conflict and finally ruin.
The escarpment of Mpumalanga with its views of hazy faraway bluish mountains, vleis of waving grass, sighing pines, forest fires and stock theft is the backdrop of false land claims and a struggle for possession that lead to racial strife and murder.
The patriarg Jaap Vorster cannot come to terms with the blemish on his family caused by the inter racial marriage of his son Pieter to Johanna Dlamini, daughter of his black foreman. Lured by a fire in his plantation Jaap is murdered by the son of the foreman, a trained cadre. Pieter takes over the forestry enterprise and is wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife’s other brother. A fugitive from justice, he attempts to convince his wife of his innocence.
Unabating on his spoor remains Inspector Khumalo who seeks to erase the disgrace caused by Pieter’s escape from custudy and who eventually succeeds to confront him in the Appeal Court in Bloemfontein. The sessions of the Circuit Court in Piet Retief and the Appeal Court in Bloemfontein are described with intimate knowledge and the warring lawyers sketched with deprecating humour.
This action-filled novel of suspense has as sombre background music the multi-faceted insoluble South African land question.
About the author
Kees van Dijkhorst retired with more than 40 years experience as attorney, advocate, law lecturer, writer and senior judge of the High Court of South Africa. He remained active as farmer, writer and arbitrator. He criss-crossed Africa several times in his Land Rover and inter alia drove to London and Dakar. He explored China, Pakistan, India, Russia and the America’s in public transport. In his youth he was an enthusiastic mountaineer.He farmed for 43 years on the farm Geelhoutboom, district Wakkerstroom, Mpumalanga, with pine trees and Drakensberger cattle.
More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
700,748 Ebooks in this category
