Mother Tongue — Helen May

In Mother Tongue, Helen May brings us the courageous and compelling story of Madelaine, a Scottish girl born in South Africa on the brink of World War II and the apartheid era. Raised by the Zulu people who work in her family's household and on the farm, Madelaine speaks Zulu and learns from them valuable messages about kindness and survival. When she attends the village school, she is punished for her friendship with the Zulu, thus beginning a lifelong, soul-searching journey towards practicing kindness and forgiveness in a world torn by prejudice. Her travels take her across the world, to Rio de Janeiro, to a long and adventurous drive north to Vancouver and the eventual disillusion of an ill-fated marriage. Even in Canada, she witnesses the deep scars of racism and colonization, and eventually turns her gaze back to her homeland, where she must answer a spiritual debt for those who taught her her mother tongue. In a novel about the hardships of identity and one's duty to humanity, Mother Tongue is an emotional tour de force. Using her astounding ability to tell stories embedded with both personal and globe-spanning insights, Helen May guides the reader through a series of soul-searching epiphanies. The result is an image of a world healed, piece-by-piece, by the transformative power of compassion.