Another Woman's Daughter

November 1, 2015
Celia Mphephu hates to see her beloved youngest child and only daughter, Miriam, grow up because it means Miriam will have to leave the relative safety of the Steiners, a wealthy white family in 1960s Johannesburg. Sending her to school in the township seems inevitable, until the Steiners offer her an option. Unsettled by the rising unrest in South Africa, the Steiners are moving to England, and they would like to take Miriam with themas their adopted daughter. Poor and illiterate, Celia does what she thinks is best. So Miriam Steiner grows up in England, feeling like an outsider until she meets Zelda Patel and is embraced by her immigrant family. Lonely and all but estranged from the Steiners, adult Miriam returns to South Africa to find answers about her birth mother. The pages will fly as the readers see the two Mphephu women face racism, political victimization, and emotional loss. Though the novel's end comes too abruptly, book groups will find much to discuss in this first novel, published in the UK as Shifting Colours.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)