About the Book: Set in South Africa in 1899, the story centers on the eruption of the Boer War, which pits the two families—the Courtneys and the Ballantynes—against each other and the conflict. Colonel Penrod Ballantyne, a military hero, is sent to Mafeking to prepare for the fighting, while his wife, the novelist Amber, is forced to flee with their baby, praying for his survival. Eight hundred miles south in Cape Town, industrialist Ryder Courtney bankrolls the British war effort. The Courtney’s peace is shattered when their eldest son, Leon, stows away to the front line to join his uncle, Penrod. Ryder and his artist wife, Saffron, are forced into the war zone to retrieve him, ultimately revealing the dangerous people they once were, a history Leon is about to inherit. The novel is a thrilling historical saga about two families caught in a devastating war for the heart of a country.