Introduction

For most of her young life, the fickleness of fate had been cruel to this American woman. Hilary is an orphaned college graduate who leaves her few friends behind to seek employment in LA. After leaving her first job, she finds a job as a PA to a Hollywood couple. Hilary realizes, even though she had been on a few college dates, she really had become reclusive and very lonely.

Meeting her Employers

Her employers, Roger and Liz, recognizing her melancholy, invite her to accompany them on a holiday trip to Cape Town where Liz's parents live.

Exploring Cape Town and the Karoo

After enjoying the sights and sounds around Cape Town, the tourists head out into the hauntingly beautiful Karoo where Hilary befriends a vacationing young man who has an interest in the area's Khoisan rock paintings. They spend much time together — sightseeing; exploring caves; kloofing in the mountain streams and socializing with fellow guests on the farm. They meet two secretive Chinese oil men who clearly wish to keep to themselves.

Encounters with the Khoisan

During their excursions into the nearby hills and the Karoo veld, Hilary and her friend cross paths with two direct descendants of the Khoisan community that had inhabited the region for many centuries — long before the first Europeans set foot in Southern Africa.

Questions and Tensions

Will the American and her new friend be able to handle an ultra-long distance relationship after such a brief holiday romance? Will the dangerous Kowloon-based mobsters of the BPC succeed in ending their young lives in order to steal the Khoisan's ancestral land? Remember, wherever you find oil fields, greedy predators are always watching and calculating risk versus reward.