The Fever Tree

 Since our trip to South Africa was cancelled this spring due to COVID19, I decided to visit it via The Fever Tree (#917), a historical fiction novel set there by Jennifer McVeigh.  I had rather mixed feelings about this book.  The descriptions of South Africa and the life there in the late nineteenth century, especially on the veldt for Boer farming families and the utter greed and lawlessness by the English in the diamond mining center of Kimberley were fascinating and just what I had hoped to find.  The principal characters - not so much.

The plot revolves around Frances Irvine, a gently-brought up young English woman of marriageable age who learns after her wealthy father dies that he has lost his fortune in stock speculation (Shades of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now!).  Unfortunately, he made no provision for Frances.  Her choice is to become an unpaid nursemaid/drudge for her aunt's growing family in Manchester, or marry Edwin Matthews, a doctor making his way in South Africa.  Although she has never liked Edwin, she opts to marry him.  On the voyage out from London, she falls hard for William Westbrook, a charming first class passenger.  Should she cast in her lot with William, or remain true to Edwin, who has financed her passage out to South Africa?  You'll have to read it to find out, but I found Frances to be incredibly stupid.  Maybe it was her naivete, or her inflated sense of self-worth, but I wondered how either man could tolerate her.  Suffice it to say that it takes almost the entire novel before she finally snaps out of it after nearly succumbing to the smallpox Edwin Matthews claimed was ravaging Kimberley. 

This book came out several years ago, but I was still shocked by the Oxford-educated author's use of a number of derogatory terms for the indigenous population.  My, how times have changed!  She does add in her notes at the end that her idea for the novel came from research she was doing which revealed the deliberate suppression of any information pertaining to the outbreak of smallpox in Kimberley by Cecil Rhodes (Yes, that Cecil Rhodes of the scholarship!) lest the diamond mining industry collapse, taking British wealth with it.  If you're wearing a diamond engagement ring, you know how that enterprise turned out!