My Novels
Between Brothers
The 1970s, South Africa. Society smoulders, ready to erupt. Between Brothers tells how this eruption burns away the innocence of four young men.
Ross, Patrick and Sean O’Brien are the sons of a Northern Irish immigrant with a dark past. His violent bloodline lives on in his two older sons. Sean, the youngest, takes after his gentler South African mother.
Running parallel with their lives is the story of Jonathan Zwide, a gifted and educated young black man from Soweto, forced to leave South Africa after the 1976 riots. His African and Middle Eastern experiences make an indelible impression. He returns to Southern Africa as an accomplished freedom fighter, dedicating his life to arming the nation.
It’s now that the lives of the businessman, the journalist, the soldier and the freedom fighter begin to converge. It’s a collision course and the climax is explosive.
Through their eyes we see the tearing emotion of brothers divided; the poignant intransigence of the Northern Irish, Middle Eastern, and South African conflicts; the wasteful horror of the Angolan war; the painful catharsis of Soweto’s 1976 uprising; and the manipulated idealism of South Africa’s fledgling freedom struggle.
As the saying goes, “If we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it.” By telling the stories of these four young men – their failures and their triumphs, their hatreds and their loves – the novel reminds the reader never to forget.
The Rites of Wrong
Garret Botha is an ex-soldier and current investigative journalist whose cynicism has been sharpened by the unforgiving, war-torn majesty of Africa. When Cella Flynn enters his life he dares to hope again, to believe that the fragility of her beauty and brilliance of her art can help right the wrongs of his violent past.
But despite his best intentions, he is unable to build a relationship of balance and mutual will. He dictates. She resists.
Self-doubt grows with the arrival of Tame Khumalo, Garret’s irrepressibly optimistic and irresistibly charming photographer partner.
It is now that Garret lives the destructive consequences of dictatorship; both personally and universally. As his inner demons fall upon him, Cella and Tame, they are drawn into a triangle of insecurity, distrust, despair and finally redemption. They do so at a time when ordinary protestors throughout Africa and the world are discovering their collective power; standing up to their dictators and righting the wrongs.
The euphoria of the Arab Spring, the poignancy of central Africa’s child soldiers and the cynicism of Zimbabwe’s blood diamonds provide the canvas upon which their true colours emerge in a climax that is both shocking and gentle, an end and a beginning – much like the events of 2011 themselves.
