The Syringa Tree

School Library Journal: Adult/High School-Six-year-old Lizzy is present when her doctor father secretly delivers the baby of her nurse, Salamina, in a white suburb of South Africa in 1963. It becomes Lizzy's special responsibility to keep the infant hidden from the police as well as from the Afrikaner neighbors. As the irrepressible child grows, it becomes more and more difficult to keep Moliseng hidden, and she is sent to the slums of Soweto to live with her grandmother. At the age of 14, she is killed by police as she leads other children in a final defiant and heartrending gesture, proclaiming her freedom. The narrative is told from the point of view of Lizzy, who grapples with the conflicting social, political, and religious values of the times and with her mother's depression. She finds comfort, if not answers, in the distracted attention of her father, the unconditional love of her nurse, and her own Syringa tree with its sweet-smelling blossoms. Readers will be carried away by lyrical descriptions of the sensual beauty of the veld and will experience the heartache of the characters as their lives are torn apart by the violence of the period. The story is as compelling and enlightening as Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (S & S, 1977), and the writing is evocative of that classic work.-Jackie Gropman, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.