Ellie Kent longs to belong. Orphaned as a child and raised in the bleak confines of an asylum, Ellie jumps at the opportunity when she is sent as a governess to a family bound for the distant colony of South Africa. But before reaching their destination, she is abandoned once more – cast adrift in a land as vast as it is unforgiving. Left with no choice but to join a caravan of settlers, Ellie finds herself in the company of an unsavoury trader, a mysterious opera singer, and a young Afrikaner, Gysbert de Boer, tasked with delivering her safely to an uncertain future. As war brews on the horizon and the settlers struggle for survival in a land that offers little mercy, Ellie must carve out a home – or be lost to the wilderness forever. A sweeping frontier fable, The...
Claire Robertson is the acclaimed author of The Spiral House, The Magistrate of Gower, Under Glass and Isle. She has been awarded with both the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and a South African Literary Award. She grew up in the Eastern Cape, and now lives in Australia.
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