Cradock, the Karoo town at the centre of The Housemaid's Daughter, and Simon's Town, the seaside location for The Girl from Simon's Bay, provided me with winding streets and historic buildings that have largely remained unchanged since the era evoked by each novel. They were also towns well known to me via family connections.
But The Fire Portrait presented me with a delicate decision. A shocking event takes place in the novel, with significant consequences for the community - and the trajectory of the story. My research confirmed that a similar incident/s took place in real life in another part of the country. And here was the dilemma: even although I'm writing fiction, is it fair to set my fictional shocker in a real place that may have had a history of unbroken tranquillity, for example? Or perhaps there had been dissent that was hushed up and my story would inadvertently enliven bad blood?
I have always tried to set my fictional stories against an accurate historical background, confirmed by research. So, for instance, when I name warships in the dockyard in Simon's Town, they actually were there at the time. And when I place Ada at a noisy public meeting over rent, a meeting did indeed take place and the figures quoted are authentic.
But the hamlet at the centre of The Fire Portrait is, by my choice, fictional.
Aloe Glen is an intriguing, mythical place, similar to many small communities in the South African hinterland at that time, but unique in that it has never existed outside the pages of this novel. It lies along the railway line whose named stations and sidings are all real... except for Aloe Glen's.
Come with me and see what happens there!
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