South Africa, 1962. Michaela, stubborn and single-minded, is willing to risk her life to overthrow the repressive South African government and its racist policy of apartheid. By the time she stops to count her losses, she has become a saboteur charged with treason, living under an assumed name in a relationship banned by law, and her young son has been spirited out of the country to grow up believing that his mother died in the fight for freedom.

Growing up with his silent and wounded father, Steven grapples with the loss of his mother. Halfway across the world, Michaela believes that she has forfeited the right to be Steven’s mother, that he knows where she is and has chosen not to contact her.

Told across five decades, in the voices of all four main characters, Bloodlines paints on canvases large and small, from the struggle against apartheid to the secrets and brutalities that tear apart a family. Equal parts geopolitical thriller and one man’s search for truth, it explores the damage inflicted by history, and the havoc wrought by lies.

About Neville Frankel:

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Neville Frankel immigrated to Boston with his family when he was 14. After graduating from Dartmouth College, he pursued doctoral work in English literature at the University of Toronto. While in Canada, he wrote The Third Power, a well-reviewed political thriller about the transformation of Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Frankel also received an Emmy for his work on a BBC documentary, The Hillside Strangler: Mind of a Murderer.

In 2002 he returned to South Africa for the first time in 38 years. Over the next decade he went back several more times, researching what would become Bloodlines.