It is 1834. The Eastern Cape frontier is burning. Rauch Beukes, a young Boer of 17, returns to the family homestead to find it razed, the livestock gone and his mother and sisters slaughtered by the marauding Xhosa from across the Great Fish River.
So begins a tale of violence and warfare and love and lust across racial divides, painted against the grand backdrop of the Boer migration north into the hinterland that became known as the Great Trek, the result of British duplicity and injustice.
The dramatis personae are Boer and Brit, Xhosa, Zulu, Matabele and Cape Malay slaves: from the Xhosa chief Hinsta, Colonel Harry Smith, the Zulu tyrant Dingaan, to the Boer trekkers Potgieter, Retief, Maritz, Trichardt and Cilliers.
And in young Rauch’s life are three astonishing women: Amelia, the daughter of an English settler; Marietjie, the beautiful meisie from Graaff-Reinet; and Katrina September, the sensual ex-slave.
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