The October Killings by Wessel Ebersohn

A fascinating story of the post-Apartheid era.  Abigail Bukula, a lawyer in the new Government, is forced to face the past in the form of ex-soldier, Leon Lourens.

When a raid on her village caused the deaths of many residents, including her parents, Lourens risked his career to save Abigail, then only 15.  And now Lourens appears at her government office begging her for help.

It seems one by one, members of Lourens unit are being murdered on the anniversary of the raid on Maseru.  Bukula can’t turn down Louren’s request because she wouldn’t be alive some 20 years later if it wasn’t for his bravery on her behalf. The key to these murders may lie in the prison known as C-Max. All soldiers who renounced their allegiance to the old regime were given amnesty, but the leader of the unit refused to and now Marinus van Jaarsveld will spend the rest of his life in jail.

Abigail , somehow, has to get to visit him in prison and get answers that might stop the murders.  She is about to establish a strange relationship with the ex-prison psychologist, Yudel Gordon. Gordon had been dismissed because some of his techniques in working with prisoners were unorthodox. And yet now he has been rehired to perform some new tasks for the prison system. Gordon is Abigail’s only way into the prison system.

Can she discover anything that will prevent the next murder which will occur in five days…..the next anniversary of the raid at Maseru?? But one name keeps ‘popping’ up in Abigail memory…..Michael Bishop! Abigail is scared just thinking that Bishop is involved with these murders.

This story could ‘almost’ be called historical fiction because it touches much of what life was like in South Africa over the last quarter century.  And certainly Wessel Ebersohn holds your attention with his spellbinding murder mystery.

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The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

I’ve watched the movie The Power of One so many times that I don’t know how I had never picked up the book until this summer. The book and movie tell the story of Peekay, a young boy being raised in South Africa – a lonely place for the sole British child in a world of Afrikaners and Africans. When Peekay’s mother has a nervous breakdown and is no longer able to care for him, she sends him to a boarding school where humiliation and sadness pass his time. When a gang of older students led by “the Judge,” a Nazi supporting anti-English bully, begins to torment Peekay he reverts to bed wetting and is further punished by the school’s administration. Back home during a school break, Peekay is cured by a medicine man who gives him a new resolve in dealing with his problems at school.

At the end of the school year Peekay is beckoned home to once again live with his now well mother and his grandfather. On the long train ride to the town of Barberton, Peekay is taken under the wing of the train guard, Hoppie Groenwald, a professional welterweight boxer and boxing champion of the railways. This solitary trip changes Peekay’s life, and his dream to become the welterweight champion of the world is born.

Peekay meets his first real friend (outside of his beloved Nanny, who has not come with his family to their new home in Barberton) in the unlikely companionship of Professor Karl von Vollesteen, a German professor of music and lover of cacti. When the Professor is imprisoned for being an unregistered foreigner, Peekay becomes a regular at the prison where he finally learns to box.

Peekay and the professor, with the help of the local Barberton librarian and her many influences around town,  begin to improve the lives of the mostly African inmates of the prison, writing letters to their families, smuggling in tobacco, and raising the hope of the tribes. These changes are mostly attributed to Peekay, and he becomes known by the Africans as the Tadpole Angel, creating a legend of hope and inspiration that follows Peekay throughout his life.

This is such an excellent book (and movie.) It’s a long one, but worth the time invested.

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