EMPIRE SETTINGS

An engaging and poignant account of forbidden love between a privileged 17-year-old white boy and the daughter of a Zulu servant woman under apartheid in 1970s Durban, South Africa marks the literary debut of a Durban-born, but Dartmouth- and Cornell-educated Boston attorney. Fleeing retribution for his taboo relationship—and possible reprisal for his mother's liberal political celebrity—in 1978, Danny Divin arrives in Boston and marries an impetuous, caring young artist to avoid deportation. Although the marriage bond deepens over the years, Danny cannot shake the bittersweet memory of his first love. Narrated in sequential chapters (with flashbacks) in the voices of Danny, his mother, his sister, the servant, the girl and Danny again, the novel opens 20 years after Danny's arrival in Boston. Danny's mother and her second husband, a once-wealthy entrepreneur whose fortune has diminished in the corrupt South African economy, fly to Boston to persuade Danny to return to Durban to orchestrate the highly illegal transfer of the family's holdings to avoid seizure by the treacherous government. Seduced by the possibility of seeing his former lover again, Danny finally agrees, against his better judgment. The final chapter returns to Danny's voice and time present, recounting his perilous journey home to attempt to save the family fortune and recapture his dream of youthful romance. Between his attempt to accomplish his precarious mission and avoid imprisonment by the government, his quest to find his lost love and his strained fidelity to his wife, a fine edge of suspense is generated. An altogether promising debut. Agent, Peter Matson, Sterling Lord Literistic. 20,000 first printing; $75,000 advertising budget; 8-city author tour; film option to producers of The Handmaid's Tale. (Oct.)