Wine, Flora and Fauna

 

In my novels, I've always searched for an underlying theme that will weave its way through the story despite how the plot might twist and turn. In The Housemaid's Daughter, the theme was Music and its influence on Ada's life. In The Girl from Simon's Bay it was the forces of Nature and War that buffeted Louise. In The Fire Portrait, Art was Frances's inspiration and life's work.

In The Case Against Fili Du Bois, the theme that pervades the book is Wine and - alongside it - the unique and beautiful Flora and Fauna of the Western Cape. The heroine, Fili, is determined to prove her worth to her adoptive parents on their French heritage estate, and immerses herself in the wine-making process. As a thirteen-year-old, she fulfils a promise: My first vintage would be  a cabernet, a famous red grape with hints of blackcurrant and cherry, and a liking for several years' rest in oak barrels that had come all the way from France.   

But when strangers arrive in the area, tensions rise and stones are thrown - will she or her family be a target? I found myself flinching but it was only a glint of emerald green darting over my head - a malachite sunbird, pointy-tailed, heading for the protea-rich slopes beyond the vines...  

And on one of the most consequential evenings of Fili's life, she overhears her parents discussing her future - almost disrupted by the bark of a caracal wild cat and, earlier, by the cut-off cry of a nightjar that might signal intruders... 
Dad, I wanted to yell, what about the warning? What about the bird's warning? 

More next time...