Killing Karoline

a memoir

Plot

"The result of an illegal affair between a white British woman and a black South African man during the dark days of apartheid, "Karoline" is born in an upmarket Johannesburg suburb in 1980. Classified as "white" at birth under the draconian regime's race classification laws, Karoline's true parentage emerges just days after she is born. At six weeks old she is secreted out of South Africa under the pretense of needing urgent medical treatment in the UK. But on returning to South Africa, her biological mother informs family and friends that her newborn has died abroad. Karoline is adopted and christened Sarah-Jane by a white British couple and spends her formative years in middle-class Surrey in the south of England. She grows up increasingly aware that she is different. Despite her desperate longing to fit in, she is unable to shake the feeling of being an outsider. Plagued by questions surrounding her own identity--not white, not black, not South African, not British--Sara-Jayne/Karoline begins to turn on herself. At the age of 26, she comes full circle and returns "home" to South Africa, entering rehab to face her inner demons. Here she is forced to confront the fallout from the shocking lie created to cover up her very existance. But hardest of all is facing the family who killed her off at just six weeks old, while they must confront what happens when the baby they said they buried returns from the dead."--Page 4 of cover