The Lighted Rooms

A stunningly incisive and poignant novel about family, duty and the challenging world of the mind.Joan McAllistair is about to embark on the ‘Trip of a Lifetime’ with her daughter Eloise; a jou
ey back to her childhood South Africa and the family homestead in the old Boer Republic of the Orange Free State.For Eloise, the trip is partly a gift, partly a means of assuaging her guilt at moving her mother into a care home. For Joan, the discovery of her grandmother’s jou
al transports her to the troubled times of the Anglo-Boer war. Eloise, in the meantime, has gambled her business’s entire fortune on a promise made by an old lover.As their stories unravel, Joan takes increasing refuge in the landscape of her mind – in jou
eys to her own past. She also finds an unexpected friend in a lonely teenager who shares her fascination with history.