A masterpiece of historical fiction, Children of Sugarcane will transport readers to South Africa’s horrific period of indenture with a historically accurate account of the social, political, and personal histories of Indian indentured labourers, while recounting a story of romance and exploring the truest examples of love and yearning – for one’s family, one’s friends, one’s roots and one’s adopted home.

Set across two generations, Children of Sugarcane is a captivating story about family, love, hardship, trauma, friendship, romance, and freedom told by the protagonist, Shanti, as she reflects on her life.

The late 1860s: Shanti is a young girl from a lower caste and lives with her family in a small village in India. Conditions are tough, but in this closely-knit community, among streets lined with fruit trees, birdsong and children’s laughter, Shanti enjoys a pure sense of adventure and dreams of a future different to what most girls can expect when they come of age. One day, when playing near the temple, Shanti meets Aunty Saras who opens her world to a possibility of life beyond her home, trapped in an arranged marriage. Shanti’s parents, unaware of the secret Aunty Saras and Shanti share, insist she follow custom. Desperate for a better life where she is free and can provide for her parents, Shanti hatches a plan to escape to The Colony of Natal, “the most beautiful place on earth…”

Early 1870: A long sea voyage later, Shanti arrives in what many believe to be a land of milk and honey but is instead a place of adversity, labour, violence, and death. She and thousands of Indian travellers – those who have survived the cruel journey – are subjugated and work as cheap labourers on the sugarcane plantations of wealthy British landowners. Here, in the depth of horror and despair, Shanti will set in motion a series of events that will have devastating consequences for her and those she loves most.

Early 1900s: Decades later, an aging Shanti reminisces about her time in South Africa as she faces new challenges with the daughter she brought back from Natal.