Wilbur Smith: A Falcon Flies

˝They came riding into Koloberg an hour before dawn, dark swift horsemen, a hundred of them, bearded and burned to the colour of Africa's dark earth. They left only the smoke from the smouldering, roofless buildings drifting in eddies across the vast empty plain. It is 1860. Robyn and Zouga Ballantyne are sister and brother united in the quest to find their father, a missionary driven into the African heartland by revengeful white slavers. But their fateful journey into the vanished Eden of the great and undiscovered interior brings a grim destruction of an ancient way of life and a terrifying family betrayal that will alter the course of African history. Robyn's love is tainted with the evil smear of slavery. Zouga's zeal and passion are cruelly sacrificed to a consuming lust for power and gold. From the fever-ridden shores of the Indian Ocean to the burning plains of the veld their destinies are bound to a mighty continent torn apart by avarice and destruction.˝