Just before she dies, the writer’s mother leaves her with a difficult secret and an urge to retrieve the past. After years of trawling through family archives, she realises the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of doing so. However, what the writer does discover is a passionate and moving love story, which becomes the core of this book. The Sinners’ Bench uses different modes and tones to tell a story. There are extracts from letters, homespun publications, family myths and stories, childhood memories and photographs. The personal story is conveyed as memoir, which in turn is embedded in family history. This history is explored as part of the history and culture of the German Lutheran missionaries in South Africa. The story is imbued with a sense of everything arising and passing. Wars are started and peace is made, people migrate and find a new home, new generations take centre stage and make space for the next one.
