Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.
This week I am not sharing my story, about the lovable Sipho and the twins Emma and Irma. Yes I will share more soon. Update on the not yet published novel - almost there, just a few more weeks. I am still uncertain about the cover.
Now let me share something totally different this week.
Baby farm, yes we know what that means, we have heard of that in the news and especially about the Nigeria one. Awful thought and traumatic for the children, not something expected in a democratic country and definitely not expected from a decent human being!
The baby farm, a novel by my friend, Louis Steyn, incredible and spooky. The story focuses on three children, two brothers, Force and Cat and a girl named Luna. These three children make a pact to meet in Paris when they turn twenty-one, and that I am sure gave these unfortunate children a flicker of hope.
At the baby farm when the children turn six years old they leave, and depending on the color of their armbands, their fate is sealed. Luna and Force, being the same age received different color armbands. Luna knew the blue armband was for donors. A clever child, she created a diversion that ended in both of them having the same color, at least the same fate. Set off to finishing school for a month or so and then sold to ghastly people as sex slaves.
The story tells of their emotional suffering and dreadful torture and endurance to strive for freedom. Freedom at any cost, even murder.
A twist in the story that not even I would have imagined possible. This is a story I enjoyed, and I must say not for the fainthearted, and definitely not for children. Explicit and descriptive scenes throughout the story will keep you guessing until the end.
The opening chapters of the BABY FARM
Morning sky, grey and cold. Hazy mist covered the sleeping city like a shroud softening but not concealing. Slabs of building stood silent as gravestones, darkness lingering in the horizontals and verticals, hiding in the spaces between. Locked in a grid, waiting quietly for the new day.
Built brick by brick in haste and bravado, demolishing the old and the beautiful, making openings for windows, timer bridges spanning wild concrete pouring on the steel inside. History obliterated, the modern city arose out of the ancient dust of Africa. Built in brash confidence to outlast the pyramids only to be finally abandoned and buried at the double funerals of industry and commerce.
A new day in a dead city. Like empty shells thrown away, they stood and waited patiently as the people moved in. There like maggots in a corpse, they lived their squalid lives, without electricity, without water, without hope in a world gone mad.
A smudge of pale light, a lemon sky bitter and cold as juice banished the darkness of night. Birds in the dark trees that still lined the streets greeted the new day. Their bird sounds stranger discordant music on an empty stage. The people still asleep did not hear or care. Today was just another day same as yesterday, same as tomorrow.
Time continued, as always, supremely oblivious. Life and time intertwined.
In the dark heart of the city stood a building that had once been a bustling office tower. On the first floor, once a parking garage, a boy pushed a little wooden box closer to the tall windows and climbed up on it, his little toes curling over the edge, his face pressed up against the cold glass and he squinted through a tear in the yellowed newspaper that covered the lower half of the dusty window.
Well I have shared the first few chapters of this compelling novel and if you want to know more, then leave a comment or contact me and I will share.
The good news this week and celebrated around the world is the release of the women held captive for so many years. That is a story with a wonderful ending and I cannot imagine the joy of being free from a living nightmare. A candle for the brave women.
All the best,
Your friend,
Laura
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