A Family Affair - A Son's Desperate Search for the Father He Never Knew

War raged in the eastern territories of South Africa for nearly one hundred years. The wars were not continuous, nor were they single-faceted in instigator or causal factors, although issues of power or land were at the heart of all of them. Into that conflagration came the Belmont family: a simple storekeeper, his wife, and six children. They lived in Salem, a small farming village which was attacked on Christmas Day, 1834. The warriors were part of the army of the Xhosa chief, Maqoma, seeking revenge for the murder of his brother. The parents were killed, slaughtered, but with incredible bravery and resourcefulness the children escaped and made their way to Grahamstown, where they were eventually separated and taken into adoption. This is the story of a father and son, a story which unfolds over two generations and three continents. It is a story of traumatised young men seeking family, and the time and place they have lost and must find, and it has an ending none can have predicted or even welcomed.