Linda C Saunders

Khanyisa Linda C Saunders

"Every self-respecting household has a box - a box that holds treasures and memories, photos and letters, newspaper clippings, hidden things, forgotten things, and sometimes poems."

Disillusioned and frustrated at the turn that both her personal life and post-Mandela South Africa have taken, Judy McLeod, former political activist and missionary, is rummaging through her box when she comes across a blue and white marble. Transported back to the year she spent in Kangwane, South Africa just before the first democratic election, Judy recalls the pleasures and pain, triumphs and tragedies and the mystery she tried to unravel, before deciding to return there with her daughter.

In this sometimes hilarious, sometimes heart-breaking story of a village caught up in a time between times, we meet the Renegade Sisters, the eccentric Khokho Mabuza, the "inappropriate" relationships that Judy gets involved in, and the children, around whom the tragic events revolve.