Bloodline

The Great Karoo of South Africa is vast in its stark aridness, imposing an introvertedness on the lives of the generations of the farming folk who live there. A culture of survival yields a litany of family secrets, inescapable tensions and undercurrents which have led to family divisions, even murder. Yet every so often the Karoo yields its own unique brand of enriching surprises. Author Derek Thomas lives there and has been inspired to write this saga, ‘Bloodline’, about the De Groot family of the farm Cambria, ambitious sheep farmers who become wealthy through the discovery of gold under the arid earth. This family saga may not be unique, but it is the essence of the intangible heritage of the sparse plains of the Great Karoo