Light on a Dark Secret | a great read over these long weekends.

A great read for your book club. . Author : Glyniss Hayward.

You can now buy LIGHT ON A DARK SECRET. It will be a few weeks still before the paperback is released, but the wait is over for Kindle readers. In 1982, Fran Walker was born in California and given up for adoption. Twenty years later, she is on a quest to find her biological parents and solve questions that have plagued her since childhood. Four women are the story…tellers and each narrates her perspective of events that began in 1980, when two students fell in love in South Africa. In addition to Fran, the women are her birth mother, biological grandmother, and adoptive mother. 1980 was a difficult time in apartheid-era South Africa for those who opposed government policies; it was extremely dangerous to act outside the law. As a bi-racial couple in a country governed by strict laws of racial segregation, Valerie and Johan’s love affair was clandestine. The consequence of their forbidden love, if discovered, would be immediate incarceration. A child from such a union was unthinkable. Discovering she is pregnant, Valerie is faced with imminent exposure. Unable to communicate with Johan, who is being closely monitored by the police, she makes decisions that will have far-reaching consequences. Her actions, as well as those of her mother, Sharon Spencer, and Grace Walker – Fran’s adoptive mother, raise the question: More than biology, what does it take to be a mother? Fran despairs when, amidst prejudice and recrimination, her search discovers a family alienated and broken. But the journey to South Africa is a coming of age for her when she falls in love with a fellow student. She gains insights which help her understand and forgive the circumstances that surrounded her birth.

About the Author

An essayist and novelist, Glynnis Hayward was born and educated in South Africa, where she graduated from the University of Natal and began teaching English in her home town of Durban. She has since lived and taught on three continents but has made her home in Northern California since 1979. In 2008 she won a PULITZER Center Award for Citizen Journalism. Her prize-winning essay discussed how d…iscrimination and stigma perpetuate the global Aids/HIV epidemic. Also in 2008, she placed first in a UNITED NATIONS essay contest promoting the humble potato as a cheap, nutritious source of food to combat world hunger. In 2007 “A SIGNIFICANT TEST OF BLOOD” was published, a novel set in contemporary South Africa and California. It challenges the reader to consider what makes a victim – circumstances or self-pity. In 2003 her first novel was published. “A TELLING TIME” is set in Durban during the dark days of apartheid-era South Africa. Bigotry comes close to destroying families and society, yet amidst the turmoil of those times, love and reconciliation bloom. In her fiction writing, she shows the inter-connectedness of global problems. Her novels received mention in the Journal for Commonwealth Literature alongside such illustrious South African writers as Nobel Laureates and Booker prize winners, Alan Paton, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing and J.M. Coetzee. She is currently working on a third novel. A TELLING TIME and A SIGNIFICANT TEST OF BLOOD can be found at: E-books:Amazon’s KINDLE store; www.e-bookstore.co; UNITED KINGDOM www.amazon.uk; www.waterstones.com; CANADA www.amazon.ca; AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND www.mightyape.com.au; www.borders.com.au; INDIA www.nbcindia.com; SOUTH AFRICA www.lekkerplanet.co.za/Books; www2.loot.co.za; USA www.publishamerica.com; www.barnesandnoble.com; www.amazon.com