I thought this novel would be a bit boring, but it turned out to be a fascinating read and a wonderful glimpse into a woman's life in a time and place most Americans would never think about. I whole-heartedly recommend this book.

I started this book at the beginning of a long drive home from New Jersey after Thanksgiving. Seven hours later, I was amazed to see that we had arrived home. The time flew by as McCord drew me more and more deeply into Katie's life. I highly recommend this wonderful book!

The Calling of Katie Mankaya has a profoundly personal history for me. Ms. McCord, during the past twenty of the 40 years of her work's history, had read selections of her work in progress to a group of writer friends, of which both my parents were part. My mother would bring me to these "writer's meetings" where I would sit, silent, rapt, listening to voices and words and worlds fantastic and strange and tragic and joyous. Ms McCord's work is the most vivd of my memories; her words would spill across the evening's fabric, her syntax gripping, her accent hypnotising, her diction flawless. I've been waiting for this book for a long time. Much has come to pass since. South Africa is free. The writers have grown distant. My mother is gone. And, at last, the Calling of Katie Mankaya has found it's voice, it's manifestation, gathering awards and praise with effortless ease. The Calling of Katie Mankaya has fallen into place like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, a nexus of parts, completing the matrix that enmeshed it, or perhaps gathering that in which it radiated. Ms McCord's published work is a fifth of her orginial manuscript. Perhaps some of Ms McCord's selections of Katie's life's fragments are too personal, too esoteric for an epic, historical novel, but then again, perhaps it is this intimacy of Katie's life that makes Katie herself all the more real. It is a human story, rather than a sweeping Michenerian saga. It is towards the end of the book where Ms McCord refuses to hold back, and well, frankly, emotionally milks the moment for all it's worth. And it is this ending, as an elderly Katie looks back on her life, her loves, her losses, her regrets and triumphs, her tragedies and joys, it is here when the reader is offered a sort of mirror, in which they are allowed to view their own lives, of what was, of what is, and what could be; life in perspective, with Katie's story a frame of reference, an offering all the poignant knowing Katie's story to be true. The Calling of Katie Mankaya is an important work, especially now with a new South Africa arising from the ashes of division and hatred. But it is also an important work with regards to the timeless pathos of the human spirit, of the dying art of a mother's love, and the rarified grace of human dignity. It is an homage towards nobility on a level of everyday existence; ordinary life made anything but ordinary - rather, extraordinary. It is also an important book for that 10 year old boy who was captivated by the words that unfurled across those forgotten rooms, spilled across endless unpublished pages, who has seen the foundation on which many a personal dream were build on at last find it's place in this unyielding world we ponder through, like a book. Sorry you missed it, Mom. You would have loved it.