Tweens and teens and adult themes READING THE WIND by Dorothy
Dyer (Maskew Miller Longman) This captivating novel takes
readers back to the Cape Town of the 18th century in which
slavery has been abolished but people of colour have very little
more freedom than they did when they were bought and sold.
Dorothy Dyer, whose love for the history of Cape Town was
evinced in her co-written novel, Time Twisters (she was one half
of the pseudonym Sam Roth), spins the tale of a feisty young
serving maid with a vision for her future that goes way beyond
the drudgery of servanthood. Within her fictional framework,
Dyer introduces the remarkable and distinctly non-fictional
Bleek/Lloyd family, whose work with Bushmen incarcerated in the
Breakwater Prison has given linguists an invaluable record of
languages that would otherwise have been lost to the world.
Katrina, daughter of a black domestic worker and an unknown (she
thinks) white father, is more advantaged than her peers in that
she is permitted by her employer to at