Voices on the wind

When Eva?s South African-born mother dies suddenly at home in Sydney, Eva, in her first year of teaching, suffers a breakdown. After some months, encouraged by her grandmother, Eva travels back to Johannesburg to fill in the stories of her Lebanese ancestors.In the museum beside the Lebanese church, she finds the story of her great-great-grandparents, Edmond and Lily Khalil who left Lebanon, to live in Queenstown at the southernmost tip of Africa in 1908. In 1913, Edmond, a leader in the Lebanese community, travels to the Bloemfontein Supreme Court where Lebanese racial classification is being decided. During the First World War, his displacement in a South Africa divided along language and racial lines is amplified by the war-cry of the English king.After a harrowing start, Lily, alongside Edmond, guides the young women who birth the next generation, imbuing them with the culture of home. She is assisted by Mrs Botha, the Boer midwife with a heart of gold and the breasts and hands of their missing mothers. After having four children, Lily is distressed when another woman arrives to live in their family home.With a secret love of their language and homeland, sharing no history with any other group in South Africa, these Lebanese immigrants coalesced into an extended family. Their conflicted race left them lacking political courage, but their inner sense of home and community enabled them to welcome many who crossed their path.Finding evidence in the museum to support her grandmother?s stories, Eva meets a spectre, or is it yet another of the voices that haunt her?As Eva puts this history together, her fractured mind starts to heal.