Synopsis
1878. South Africa. A country torn apart by greed.
Frances Irvine, left destitute by her father's sudden death, is forced to travel from the security and familiarity of her privileged English life to marry Edwin Matthews, an ambitious but penniless young doctor in South Africa.
They are posted to a smallpox station on the vast, inhospitable plains of the Karoo but she is so caught up in her own sense of entitlement and loss of status that she cannot recognise its hidden beauty nor the honour and integrity of the man she has married. All her hopes for happiness seem destroyed when her husband exposes the epidemic that is devastating the native community in the diamond-mining town of Kimberley. Here, the gleaming houses of the rich disguise the poverty of a labour force under coercion, and Frances is drawn into a ruthless world of wealth and opportunity, where influential men will go to any lengths to keep the mines in operation.
Passionately caught up with the man her husband is fighting to bring down, she must make a fateful choice.
The Fever Tree is a powerful and moving novel set against the raw backdrop of nineteenth-century Colonial South Africa, its deprivation and beauty alive in equal measure. Above all it is an achingly poignant love story, saving the best and most profound moments of truth and redemption until the last pages.
Reviews
Customer Review: 03 January 2012
Reviewer: The Commuting Bookworm
'Set in the late 1800’s we follow Frances’s metamorphous from a spoilt child, into a capable woman, from when her father dies, though her passage to Africa and beyond, to having to choose husband or lover. McVeigh really has captured the essence of the period in this beautiful, exciting, descriptive novel. The vocabulary paints a picture with her words, the sights, smells and emotions are all here, in the same fashion as Bronte, Hardy and Gaskell would have conveyed. However, she has one modern skill of editing, and therefore the book is not long winded where its not required. McVeigh made me care about Francis, Edwin and William. I appreciated, the Zebra and the Meercat and the hardships that the drought and the smallpox epidemic in 1882 would have caused in South Africa. This novel left me with a thirst for McVeigh’s next book, and also for the next chapter in Frances’s life. I want to know what happened next. Personal Read 5/5 Book Group Read 5/5 The Commuting Bookworm 03/01/12 '
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Format :
Paperback
ISBN: 9780670920891
Size : 153 x 234mm
Pages : 352
Published : 29 Mar 2012
Publisher : Viking Adult
Other formats for The Fever Tree:
» Paperback : £7.99
» ePub eBook: eBook : £4.99
The Fever Tree
£12.99
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