Walk

The true and epic story of a boy's survival in the face of impossible odds, Walk tells of a deadly scramble down the wild coastline of what is present-day South Africa. This length of coastline is a hike that every South African should have the privilege of taking. But for the survivors of the wreck of the Grosvenor, as they clambered onto the rocks on August 5, 1782, they might as well have crash-landed on Mars. The shipwrecked decided to walk to the Cape of Good Hope, though their ordeal starting at Lambasi in northern Pondoland ended in the dune deserts not far from what is now known as Port Elizabeth—for those few who survived it. William Hubberly, a young man and servant to the Grosvenor's second mate William Shaw, was one of them. Walk takes the reader step by step, day by day on Hubberly's horrific trek. While indisputably fiction, this work sails a good deal closer to the historical truth and is a haunting parable on the meeting of Europe and Africa.