P F Clayfield

'ingane-ye-sipepo' Child of Storm P F Clayfield

Dateline: 1877 Young Sarah Wilson's life in Manchester's Bradford village is turned upside down when she and her recently widowed father, Jebediah, a huge but naïvely simple man prone to black moods, are evicted from their colliery home after he is fired from his labouring job at the local coal mine for laying out a shift foreman. Jebediah is thrown a lifeline by the owner of a travelling boxing show who offers him a job as a pugilist and he and Sarah tour England with their new 'family'. All goes well until he falls foul of a wealthy landowner's son and certain that he will hang for a dramatic death that ensues, he flees aboard a tramp steamer bound for Port Natal in South Africa. Devastated, young Sarah follows in the hope of finding her father...but instead she receives terrible news. News that leads her into the arms of a near penniless young English gambler - Edmund Forsythe - and to the rolling hills and sugar cane fields of Zululand, where she is given the Zulu name 'Ingane-ye-Sipepo' (Child of Storm). Her feet are now firmly set onto a fateful path that sees the innocent young girl become a mature woman whose spirit is forged in the twin all consuming flames of Love and Loss when she and Edmund are drawn into the bloody conflict of the Zulu war.