ZEBRA is my second book which is largely based on my husband, Athol’s experiences. Athol grew up in a remote resort in the Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa and fought in the Bush Wars in the 60’s and 70’s. The novel spans four decades.
Like any long marriage – and we’ve been at it 37 years – our collaboration started off with great excitement which turned into a butting of left and right brains. His pragmatism pummeled against my imagination until ZEBRA finally evolved into a world of its very own – somewhere in between. Perhaps similar to having a child together – ZEBRA was created by two very opposite people coming together through desire, compromise and true love.
ZEBRA, in spite of being set in the Apartheid era, is not about politics, but I can think of no better time in history to share its message: True friendship has no color.
Two very different friends are bound by alternating threads of gossamer and sisal; coir rope and fine silk, but no matter how life pulls the ties that bind them, their friendship can never be broken.
ZEBRA (pronounced “ZzzEh (short e) Brah”
A young white boy and a Zulu tween forge a friendship and become Zulu blood brothers when one saves the other’s life. After a dozen years of being inseparable, society smelts them apart. A decade later they’re forced to meet on opposite sides of a battlefield. One a reluctant soldier, the other a passionate freedom fighter. Only one can survive. Or is blood thicker than water?