Bernadette Kiewiet

Life's Soiled Red Earth Bernadette Kiewiet

A harrowing and heart-breaking story of a five-year-old girl abandoned by her family in the midst of Apartheid South Africa. Marlene Neuman is removed from her hometown, below the slopes of Table Mountain, Cape Town, to a missionary, hundreds of miles away, at the northern border of South Africa. In the harsh unknown surroundings, she must fend off abuse from those she recognized as her own and bend to the rules of a Catholic orphanage. Her journey to adulthood is filled with twists and turns, as fate carves the pathway further away from stability and peace. She experiences the devastation caused by the government's segregation rules in every aspect of her life and in the bonds she forms with those around her. Like many other South Africans of that time, she eventually finds herself drawn into the struggle against the unjust laws of her country. She finds and loses loved ones, until she must take refuge, when the brutal South African security forces hunt her. As they begin to close in on her and the man she realises she loves, is it too late?