Youth Novel - A Red Kite
In A Pale Sky
The tsunami has brought human disaster to a scale no
one could ever have imagined. On a much smaller scale, yet just as
devastating for the people involved, when Umhlatuzana River broke its banks in 1987,
more than 300 people drowned. Houses
disappeared, telephone lines,
bridges, and railway lines were swept away and roads
caved in literally with people standing on them.
In
A RED
KITE
IN A PALE SKY, Lawrence is plucked from the raging river by
helicopter. His home has been swept away
and his mother,
baby sister, brother and twin sisters have disappeared. Sheer
tenacity helps bring his life into another sort of order very different
to what he has known.
'And
then I saw it. Lying there in the mud. Not a piece of paper,
but a piece of glass. Not a message from Ma but one from Horace.
I snatched it up and rubbed away the mud with my sleeve. What did
it say? What was its message… this little round disc that
came from Horace’s glasses? I held it up to my eye and the world
looked stranger than before.'
The Pretoria
News:
A catch in the
throat, a gasp on the lips… this is the effect this novel has on the
reader.
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