Fiela's Child (Fiela se Kind)

Fiela’s Child, a novel by Dalene Matthee, is set in South Africa in the mid-19thcentury. 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, which 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.