Islands

Debut author Sleigh's magisterial epic re-creates the fatal 17th-century Dutch encounter with the native Goringhaicona peoples (whom they called the Hottentot) on the Cape of Good Hope, largely through the plight of a native woman and her interracial children. At the novel's start, in the mid-1600s, the aging leader Autshumao, or Chief Harry, watches his people succumb to their new tastes for brandy and tobacco, supplied by the Dutch in exchange for their labor. Unable to provide for his starving band, Chief Harry offers his young niece Krotoa to work in the household of Commander van Riebeeck, head of the Dutch Company, in exchange for cattle and tobacco. Here follows the bleak fate of Krotoa, now Eva, and her daughter Pieternella, as seen through the biographies of the men who knew them. Peter Havgard, a Danish surgeon, marries Eva and fathers three of her children. After Peter is killed on Mauritius, Bart Borms, a sailor turned farmer, helps care for the widowed Eva and her children abandoned on Robben Island, a prison garrison run by the German Corporal Hans Michiel Callenbach. Later, Fiscal Deneyn, posted to the Fort of Good Hope to keep the peace, wants to marry 14-year-old Pieternella after Eva dies of syphilis and alcoholism. The girl weds sailor turned free burgher Daniel Zaaijman instead, and they attain a measure of happiness on Mauritius before the decline of the Dutch Company forces them to return to the Cape. Finally, Company officer and clerk Johannes Grevenbroeck concludes Pieternella's story as he researches his book, Portrait of the Cape, years later. With stately prose, deftly handled characterization and nuanced history, Sleigh has crafted a breathtakingly wide-ranging opus.