Fiela's Child by Dalene Matthee

I loved this book so much, I think it will be next year's summer reading assignment. Translated from Africaans to English, the story is set in South Africa in the late 19th century. The story opens set in a heavy forest where the primary mode of earning a living is through timber. At the beginning, a four year old boy wanders off and is lost in the heavy fog and thick forest. There are frequent references to the "bigfeet," as the elephants are called. Actually, the elephants almost become a character in the book. The story fast forwards to seven years later to a farm on the other side of the mountains that separate farming land from the forest. Fiela, an extremely determined and loving "brown" woman, had found a young white boy on her steps and raised him with her own children. When census takers, whom Fiela calls peace-breakers, come to her farm, they notice the child. Essentially, the boy is taken from her and given to the white family across the mountains.

The setting of this novel is critical to its storyline, not just because of racial issues, but because of the land. The elephants and ostriches, the mountains and the forest, even the unforgiving sea, all become critical to the story. It is very hard to like the white family, the Van Rooyens, since the father is presented as quite cruel. Part of you wishes the child was not theirs. It is Fiela's deep love for the child that causes her to maintain that he is not, in fact, the Van Rooyens' child even though she knows nothing of his new life with them. Racial issues prevent her side of the story from being heard in the all white court. Until the boy, known to Fiela as Benjamin and to the Van Rooyens as Lukas, grows up, it is unclear whose child he is.

This is a lovely story, and although I got a bit distracted by the love story at the very end, I would put it on the "must read" list of anyone. You will never think of elephants and ostriches the same way again!