The Lies We Shared

Don’t think about the past. I can’t not think about the past. The past is what I am. For Rebecca Falconer the past truly is another country. Two countries, in fact. Zimbabwe and Rhodesia. And while her present may be tied to the new, makeshift life she has built for herself in London, her heart remains rooted in the red earth of Glencoe – the farm she grew up on in the Eastern Highlands, now appropriated under Robert Mugabe’s land reform programme. However, while the past seems to offer assurance in the face of an unpredictable future, things are not always as they seem. When her mother dies unexpectedly, Rebecca begins a journey that will lead her back to a very different time – 1950s Kenya in the grip of the Mau Mau uprising. Confronted by the modern reality of the country that her mother once called home, Rebecca tries to come to terms with her own feelings about the woman who raised her. But, as she searches for a way of finally laying her mother’s ghost to rest, a disturbing truth comes to light that will call into question the very foundations of her family’s identity.