Empire Settings

the long version

"Danny Divin is a young white man in South Africa under apartheid when he falls in love with the daughter of a black domestic servant. The illicit romance creates a crisis for everyone concerned; for his parents who are forced to choose between their professed values and their concern for his future, for the family's black workers, who see in Danny's actions nothing but indiscretion and trouble, and for Danny himself. Eventually his parents force an end to the romance, and not long afterwards Danny's pessimism about the future, and the poisonous political atmosphere in South Africa, drive him from the country and to a new life in America.". "Within weeks of his arrival in Boston Danny meets Tesseba, an offbeat but trusting artist who takes him in and marries him so that he won't be deported. Over time Danny prospers and he and Tesseba build a life together, but his sense of being rootless persists. Nor does the passage of time fade the memory of his forbidden first love.". "Twenty years later, when he is persuaded to return to the "new" South Africa to save what he can of his family's fortune, Danny sets out to find what became of the girl he cannot forget. What he finds, instead, is the truest version of himself."--BOOK JACKET.