An engaging and poignant account of forbidden love between a privileged 17-year-old white boy and the daughter of a Zulu servant woman under apartheid in 1970s Durban, South Africa marks the literary debut of a Durban-born, but Dartmouth- and Cornell-educated Boston attorney. Fleeing retribution for his taboo relationship and possible reprisal for his mother's liberal political celebrity in 1978, Danny Divin arrives in Boston and marries an impetuous, caring young artist to avoid deportation. Although the marriage bond deepens over the years, Danny cannot shake the bittersweet memory of his first love. Narrated in sequential chapters (with flashbacks) in the voices of Danny, his mother, his sister, the servant, the girl and Danny again, the novel opens 20 years after Danny's arrival in Boston. Danny's mother and her second husband, a once-wealthy entrepreneur whose fortune has diminished in the corrupt South African economy, fly to Boston to persuade Danny to return to Durban to orchestrate the highly illegal transfer of the family's holdings to avoid seizure by the treacherous government. Seduced by the possibility of seeing his former lover again, Danny finally agrees, against his better judgment. The final chapter returns to Danny's voice and time present, recounting his perilous journey home to attempt to save the family fortune and recapture his dream of youthful romance. Between his attempt to accomplish his precarious mission and avoid imprisonment by the government, his quest to find his lost love and his strained fidelity to his wife, a fine edge of suspense is generated. An altogether promising debut. Agent, Peter Matson, Sterling Lord Literistic. 20,000 first printing; $75,000 advertising budget; 8-city author tour; film option to producers of The Handmaid's Tale.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Writing a South African Gone with the Wind, Durban-born lawyer Schmahmann examines the end of the apartheid era through the eyes of the Divan family in his debut novel. We first meet Danny as a grown man who fled to Boston 20 years ago to elude punishment for an illicit relationship with Santi, daughter of their Zulu servant woman. There, he married artist Tessaba to secure a new life. Events of the past and present intermingle as we learn that Danny's mother, Helga, was an avid antiapartheid activist and sister Bridget did jail time. The story then shifts to Helga, Bridget, Santi, her mother, and back to Danny as Schmahmann reveals the Divans' struggles in their native country. At his mother's urging, Danny returns to South Africa to sneak the family's fortune out of the country, but his true mission is to find Santi and confront the past. Schmahmann has not mastered the technique of writing in different voices as Barbara Kingsolver did in The Poisonwood Bible (LJ 9/1/98), but the way the plot gradually reveals its truths is well done, and the changes in South Africa are effectively described. Recommended. Josh Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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