James Hacking’s tastes for daring aviation, reckless driving and raunchy women are inherited from his father Ian and all nearly kill him, as does fighting to preserve a vanishing way of life.

His immigrant parents Ian and Connie fashioned thriving farms, a gold mine, and an opulent lifestyle from inhospitable African bush. Their social life is hectic, boozy and sport-orientated. They call nearby Mozambique the “Rhodesian Riviera” and fly there in their own aircraft, frequenting continental-style Portuguese restaurants across the border and sandy beaches on the coast. It all becomes endangered by Ian’s roving eye, and a native population being dragged into armed revolt by militant leaders hungry for power. Black children are press-ganged to war and those of White settlers are conscripted to meet the threat. The mutual respect built on considerate dealings with their black indigenous neighbours is gradually eroded as the tractable black population is dragged into full-scale armed insurrection by increasingly ambitious militant leaders hungry for political power.

The potent Hacking sex-drive entices James into an early love affair deemed “unsuitable” which periodically turns his life upside down, as does being dragged into a military role he performs well but finds increasingly morally questionable. It segregates him from former companions and forms animosities that plague him for generations. As their family disintegrates and his father is persecuted by the same desperate regime James is defending, many white Rhodesians begin “taking the gap”, escaping over the border into South Africa or back to Britain. Spencer Katsiru, a black classmate and former friend, commits an act of selfless bravery that is misinterpreted making him a family outcast and a bitter malicious revolutionary. Their paths inevitably cross.

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