Looking Out and Beyond by Toby Hammerschlag

Title: Looking Out and Beyond

Author: Toby Hammerschlag

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Woodslane Press

Published: 1^st November 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 2652

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: The novel is historical fiction set in the early 1950s during the dark Apartheid era, in a small rural town in South Africa, with flashbacks to the battle fields of the Second World War in North Africa. Two girls constantly encounter each other on the farm: Ada, is the only daughter of the farm owner, Jonah Courtnay and his war time bride Johelia.

Nicky is a young girl of mixed descent, and daughter of the help on the farm. The harshness of those times tests this relationship further, when the homestead is raided by the brutal, vengeful policeman, Koos. At the centre of the novel is the Courtnay farm, where Jonah and his war bride Johelia, live with their only daughter Ada and her resentful grandmother.

The passive resistance of the people during the Defiance Campaign to the unjust laws of Apartheid threatens the harvesting of the ripe apples waiting to be picked. The workers who usually walk five kilometres from the Black people’s township to the farm don’t arrive to work. However, Nicky and her mother Rosie circumvent the barricades and join the loyal workers and friends of the Courtnays who gather to save the produce. Family bonds are tested, friendships strengthened while others are fractured and even broken as Johelia and Jonah decide to build a school for the local Black children on their property.

When Johelia forms a choir for the children, ethnic music, jazz, song and dance fill the farm and the hardships of their lives under racist laws are momentarily forgotten. Interwoven in the plot are the secrets that Jonah keeps hidden within himself and his diary of his time serving during the Second World War. Ada is determined to unravel the story. Jonah finds a friend and sympathetic listener in the Australian Dr Bainton who too served in North Africa.

They lament the treatment of the unrecognised bravery of the Indigenous soldiers of South Africa and Australia. They share their war time experiences of blinding sandstorms, relentless bombardment and fierce fighting at famous battles including Tobruk. The final secret, of Jonah’s last battle at El Alamein, which has impacted so greatly on the family since the war, is revealed as they sit around the kitchen table. By the light of the candle, on a dark night, Jonah reads from his diary until there is no more to be said.

~*~

It’s 1953, the dark days of Apartheid in South Africa, not even a decade after the end of the Second World War. Ada lives on a farm in rural South Africa with her parents Jonah and Johelia who are anti-apartheid, and who do what they can to help the workers who walk five kilometres to help with the harvests. These workers live in the Black township, under constant threat from the regime and the people in charge. One of the workers, Rosie and her daughter Nicky, catch Ada’s attention each day. Soon though, talk of riots and blockades, barricades and attempts to stop people getting to work reach the farm. So, when Rosie and Nicky find a way around it, Ada’s parents work hard to keep them safe, to teach the children of the workers and help them get care from dentists and local doctors – even when faced with the constant questioning of their motives.

This is a world where prejudice is accepted, where white supremacy is the norm, and where a clash of ideas and understandings means people like Ada’s parents have to hide what they truly believe. Where racism is overt, and it does feel like nobody can really trust anyone else, even if they want to understand differences. Ada’s world is rapidly changing as she gets to know Nicky and uncovers stories about her father’s war experiences and how it changed her family, and why Grandma May is the way she is.

This is a world where people had to believe what the government said and did, where the truth could be hidden, and anyone – regardless of race – who tried to stand up against the discrimination faced harsh consequences. The realities of the risks that Ada’s family takes, that their new friends the Bainton’s take, are constantly hinted at and spoken about, culminating in events that trigger something that leads to feelings of fear for everyone. It quietly shows the true implications of apartheid through the eyes of a child who knows what her world is like, who sees how things are different, yet at the same time, knows things should be different.

Not knowing how to change things, and taking time to understand how to navigate issues and friendships that are different to what someone has known or expected to have known. But Ada has always seen how kindly her parents treat the Black workers in the shop and at home. She sees the humanity her parents show them, and wants to replicate that. She wants to understand why they feel so differently than the majority of the population – and slowly, as Ada navigates being friends with Nicky and her father’s past, things become clear.

Looking Out and Beyond is an upper middle grade to young adult book dealing with racism and trust, and learning about what the right thing to do is, even when it is illegal. It navigates the complexities of a regime that promoted division and wanted to force people to hate based on colour. A regime that tried its best to quash any sort of resistance. Koos is a glimpse into the kind of people who let the power of being part of a racist regime get to their heads, and who used fear to intimidate people. The resistance in this novel is quiet. It’s not people protesting, but people educating the people many do not see as worthy.

 It’s treating them like humans, making them feel as safe as possible and doing everything possible to connect with them as humans. Ada and Nicky feel like symbols of the resistance, where they have to toe the line, but I felt like I could see that as they grew up, they’d become involved in taking down apartheid over the years. It is a novel that shows resistance can happen in different ways as it takes place throughout 1953. The dark undertones reflect what people lived through, what they had to deal with and how they dealt with it, finding ways to resist if they could. Finding ways to adapt to different people with different ideas. There was a sense that Ada’s family hid so much of what they were doing, because they didn’t know who they could trust. Who they could reveal what they were doing to. It’s an intricate novel with layers of understanding that different readers will get different things out of.

This is a poignant and important novel with insights that can start conversations that might explore diversity and racism, and issues surrounding the ways people respond to the discussions. Books like this reveal things that aren’t or might not be in official records. It’s novels like these that give human faces to history in their tiny slivers and stories of one experience. Every experience tells part of the story, and putting these together can help. Because history can teach us lessons that we should try not to repeat. And the impacts of politics on the daily lives of ordinary people. Reflecting on the past can help us understand how to make changes, and the different ways we can do this.