The Syringa Tree Book

In this heartrending and inspiring novel set against the gorgeous, vast landscape of South Africa under apartheid, award-winning playwright Pamela Gien tells the story of two familiesâ??one black, one whiteâ??separated by racism, connected by love. Even at the age of six, lively, inquisitive Elizabeth Grace senses sheâ??s a child of privilege, â??a lucky fish.â? Soothing her worries by raiding the sugar box, she scampers up into the sheltering arms of the lilac-blooming syringa tree growing behind the familyâ??s suburban Johannesburg home.Lizzieâ??s closest ally and greatest love is her Xhosa nanny, Salamina. Deeper and more elemental than any traditional friendship, their fierce devotion to each other is charged and complicated by Lizzieâ??s mother, who suffers from creeping melancholy, by the stresses of her fatherâ??s medical practice, which is segregated by law, and by the violence, injustice, and intoxicating beauty of their country. In the social and racial upheavals of the 1960s, Lizzieâ??s eyes open to the terror and inhumanity that paralyze all the nationâ??s culturesâ??Xhosa, Zulu, Jew, English, Boer. Pass laws requiring blacks to carry permission papers for white areas and stringent curfews have briefly created an orderly stateâ??but an anxious one. Yet Lizzieâ??s home harbors its own set of rules, with hushed midnight gatherings, clandestine transactions, and the girlâ??s special task of protecting Salaminaâ??s newborn childâ??a secret that, because of the new rules, must never be mentioned outside the walls of the house.As the months pass, the contagious spirit of change sends those once underground into the streets to challenge the ruling authority. And when this unrest reaches a social and personal climax, the unthinkable will happen and forever change Lizzieâ??s view of the world. When The Syringa Tree opened off-Broadway in 2001, theater critics and audiences alike embraced the play, and it won many awards. Pamela Gien has superbly deepened the story in this new novel, giving a personal voice to the horrors and hopes of her homeland. Written with lyricism, passion, and life-affirming redemption, this compelling story shows the healing of the heart of a young woman and the soul of a sundered nation.Praise:A gripping first novel in the tradition of such great southern African writers as Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing. Spare beautiful prose builds to an unforgettable climax. --BOOKLIST, starred review            Pamela Gien's novel is impressively affecting. She is a wonder. The Syringa Tree as a play was uniquely moving, but Gien has taken it beyond its walls, and given us remarkable writing that stands freely as a deeply affecting and fresh telling of this classic story. -â??Lillian Ross  The story of a young girl and her cherished caretaker is the story of a heartbroken country. Pamela Gien brings South Africa to vivid life, illuminating how the bonds of love are stronger than the forces of history. I read the end of the book through tears. -â??Amanda Eyre Ward, author of How to Be LostThis book plunges us inside the skin of humanity and is suffused with a rare understanding. The Syringa Tree reminds us that every life can be a dropâ??and a great deal moreâ??in the sea of history.-â??Scott Simon, NPR, author of Pretty Birds and Home and AwayEvocative and impassioned. Gien captures perfectly the voice of the child Elizabeth and the grown woman she becomes. --Baltimore Sun, Summer List     Highly recommended...Gien here illuminates the shameful history of a country, by highlighting the juxtaposition of race, anti-Semitism, and class privilege. -Library Journal                                                                                                                     A spare, yet poetic account that steadily works its magic on the reader as both a portrait of individuals, and a country, in the tumultuous time of apartheid. --Seattle Post-IntelligencerGien...renders South Africa...as a virtual paradise, whichpainfully contrasts with the blood spilled on its soil. Sheâ??s an expressive, fluent writer whose best passages are lyrical yet intimate, bringing you right into the room. --Seattle WeeklyA gorgeous, hopeful, heartrending novel. . . . This uncommonly moving, deeply humane novel nearly dances in a reader's hands with the rhythms and the colors, the complicatedness and the inimitability of southern Africa."--O The Oprah MagazineFrom the Hardcover edition.Read More