by Bea Alden
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LIONGOLD is a heart-stopping account of one family's life in South Africa during the height of the apartheid regime. It was an ugly time in a beautiful place.
"With in-the-moment prose that easily recalls a child's honesty and keen eye for the absurd, Bea Alden explores what happens in a country -- South Africa -- where the keeping of secrets is a national preoccupation. Her memoir of a childhood in South Africa and the casual violence that took place both on a domestic scale, and on a national one, has such a strong sense of place, enriched with sensory detail, that I was surprised upon closing the manuscript to discover that I was not sitting in the kitchen in that Johannesburg suburb, watching long-time servant Letty go about her business. Liongold paints a vivid picture of a specific time and place. Alden bears witness, and in offering her clear-eyed memories, she also subtly explains how quickly and firmly injustice plants itself and comes to seem normal. 'A void divides the green and pleasant life of sunny white South Africa from the grimness of apartheid,' Alden writes. Here she plumbs that void and reveals its magnitude." -- Natalie Danford, author of Inheritance: co-editor, Best New American Voices.
"In language rich with mood and atmosphere, delicately unfolding the intricate relationships of gender, class, ethnicity and race, Liongold tells the story of one family, their deep personal problems, and an entire way of life doomed, necessarily, to give way to immense change."
-- Susan Bernardin, co-author of Trading Gazes; Associate Professor of Native American and American Literature, State University of New York, Oneonta.
