Fiela's Child (Fiela se Kind)

Fiela’s Child, a novel by Dalene Matthee, is set in South Africa in the mid-nineteenth century. It is the first of four in a series, each volume treating the Knysna Forest and its native inhabitants as its subject. Matthee was a veteran hiker and researcher, and her time in the region is evident in her exquisite renderings of the region.

The narrative shifts points of view, but the majority of the action is seen through the eyes of Fiela, a South African woman who works hard, complains little, and trusts that God will eventually give her prosperity. The central tension in the novel comes from her relationship to her white son Benjamin. The boy was left on her doorstep nine years before the opening of the book. Fiela took him in and raised him as her own, even though she is not white. This causes problems as the book begins. Census workers come to ask them questions. Benjamin’s description matches that of a child who disappeared from the forest in Knysna around the same time Benjamin arrived at Fiela’s home. They take him away and a magistrate decrees that he must return home with his real parents, to be raised as a white man.

During his time with his “new” family, Benjamin slowly takes on the identity of Lukas van Rooyen, the boy who was lost. He struggles with notions of his whiteness, with the concept of family and loyalty, and the divide between the life of the whites and the simpler ways of Fiela and his family. The brightest spot in the new home is his sister Nina, a defiant hellion who spites her domineering father at every turn, and with whom Benjamin eventually falls in love.

In the final third of the book, Benjamin is tormented by his love for Nina. When it is revealed that he is not actually the lost van Rooyen child, he is free to pursue her romantically. Fiela’s Child is a novel about race, love, family, and loyalty. Matthee also uses the story to make indictments of racism, misogyny, sexism, and the woes that befall those who must live within a bureaucratic system that scorns them. By the end of the book, Benjamin, Nina, and their families have all experienced a coming of age tale. Ultimately, it is an uplifting story, told with tender care, and leaves the reader with optimism for the future.