PositiveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneMacy sets up, then follows, so many leads, hints, trails and issues that the reader longs for a timeline and a list of characters, relatives, circus owners and sideshow agents just to keep things straight ... from Macy’s heart-wrenching description of life in general for African-Americans in rural Virginia in the Jim Crow South, the reader may wonder whether George and Willie were perhaps better off as Iko and Eko.
Justine van der Leun
PositiveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneRather than a heartwarming tale of forgiveness and redemption, Van der Leun has written — perhaps at too great length — a very necessary and occasionally confounding account of a small slice of post-apartheid, post-Mandela South Africa, a country that has largely been forgotten in the international maelstrom of terrorism and mass migration. It is a story of frustrated expectations, broken dreams, endemic greed and corruption, but also indomitable human spirit, told against the backdrop of one of the world’s most beautiful natural settings.
