NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

Taranaki Daily News, 6 October 1934, Page 14 (Supplement)

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

A SOUTH AFRICAN ROMANCE. “Kraal Baby.” by Cynthea Stockey. Cassell & Co-* London and Melbourne. A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth. Admirers of Miss Cynthia Stockley’s brilliant, descriptions of colonial life in South Africa will welcome the new edition of “Kraal Baby,” the story of a white girl rescued by a drunken architect from the shame of being brought up among natives. The colour question is no trifle in South African .white society, as the child was to learn as she grew up, and she suffers some bitter experiences. ■ . .... Her foster-father dies when she is still a child, and then the gods begin to be kind. She is adopted by a leading family, but when she seemed to have settled down to a life of peaceful development she is claimed by her father, who is a notorious character. lie Ls a noted hunter and takes his daughter on an expedition that was to cover country from the Cape to Nganda. The author’s descriptions of life on the veldt have lost none of their charm and pungency, and the characters of th? men of the hunting party are sketched delightfully in a few clear lines. For one reason and another disintegration sets in and the party separates, the “Kraal Baby” going to France for voice training and general education. She is placed in the care of an English widow, who is returning Home with her daughter, and very unpleasant people they prove. When the career of a singer seemed to be opening for the “Kraal Baby” the war spoiled her prospects in more senses than. one. Her father. loses his money and she returns to. Africa to find him a helpless paralytic. She finds other facts about her own parentage that are astonishing and enable the story to’ have the happiest of endings. It is a book that can be recommended for entertainment and the careful workmanship in minor detail which is so characteristic of the author's books.