This novel narrates the lives of the white working class in the years following 1950. It is a fictionalised autobiography which, as an ego document, narrates the experiences of a family of "padmakers" (road builders). These blue-collar workers built and maintained South Africa's roads in the years between 1951 and 1980 and lived transient lives, moving from town to town, unsettling their families. The author, being the child of one such a family, researched the craft of road building extensively and brings to the story the textures and living conditions of the nomadic, marginalized existences of families in the road camps of those years. The protagonist in the novel is an adult woman journeying through the countryside, researching her past, worrying about the veracity of memory, and trying to understand her own childhood trauma within her family. She remembers her father as the hardworking, approachable parent in whom she found comfort and solace. Despite his own burdens - especially an accident in which a child was killed with a road grader ~ he tried to lighten the household where his dysfunctional wife ruled. During her journey - both literal and figurative - the protagonist learns about the destructive and complicated condition - Munchaussen Syndrome - her mother had always suffered from. Learning more and more about herself and discovering the past and the influence it had on her as an adult, the protagonist comes to an understanding of her mother.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Department of English Language and Literature