Publisher's Synopsis
The Karoo, South Africa; vast, rugged and untamed. It is a place of immense spaces, endless horizons and a profound quiet that has long since settled into its very bones. Resting in its heart is the town of Hopeville, where life moves at its own pace. It is here, in this small farming community, that Max finds himself trying to cope with the catastrophic loss of his parents. Now on the cusp of manhood, the half-Dutch, half-Oriental orphan is new to the close-knit community. This, along with his mixed-race, has made him an outcast, something he chooses to embrace, despite the troubles it brings him. Gradually, and with the help of his aunt, Max attempts to build a new life and finds a measure of peace in the sleepy town and the rough charm of its surroundings - until one night when he dreams of smoke and fire. Change, life's one inescapable constant, is about to come to Hopeville. Its harbinger; Santo, a foreign mining company that will stop at nothing to get at the natural gasses lying dormant beneath his new home. Their motives are simple and greed lies at the core of their impetus. But it is their methods which are cause for true concern. Bringing with them not only a small army of paramilitary types, but the possibility of destroying one of the world's last bastions of untouched beauty, Santo begins preparation for fracking the Karoo's natural gasses.Max's grandfather Sam, the one man with whom Max has found kinship in this new life, is also the only person with knowledge enough to unravel what's really going on. A retired geologist turned-environmentalist who spends his time researching alternative energy, Sam lives completely off the grid. He is a man of principle and ideals, some of which dance along the very fringe of human science. But what neither of them realise is the threat Sam's philosophies pose not only to Santo, but to the government as well. There is a veracity to Sam's beliefs, and a mystery which he has only begun to reveal to his grandson in the form of an oriental carved ivory ball. This rare piece, known as a dragon ball, possesses properties that aren't just mysterious, but supernatural. At the core of this mythic object lies a forgotten truth, a truth which may forever remain so when Sam goes missing. Standing in his grandfather's ransacked home, Max's new-found peace is shattered as his existence is plunged once more into a spiral of loss. He turns to the only man who can help; his grandfather's best friend and lifelong companion, Supa. But there is more to this old Khoisan tracker than meets the eye as the unassuming Supa has already begun to scratch at the façade surrounding Santo. Together, the two attempt to find Sam. As their search deepens, they discover hidden enemies and agendas at all levels of the seemingly unassuming town's social, economic and political structure. But Santo are not the only ones to have taken an interest in Hopeville. The two find help in the form of PJ, an as-of-yet unknown quantity newly arrived to the town. He too has an agenda, but one which is fervently opposed to Santo.Armed with little more than his grandfather's mysterious dragon ball and his new found allies, Max attempts to find his grandfather and save his new home by unravelling the conspiracy which threatens to destroy it. But what he uncovers moves beyond the realm of the unexpected and into that of the impossible in a tale of family, loss, and of a truth that devastates the very foundations of reality.
