Luck has a way of following Piet Barol wherever he goes--until now. The young libertine introduced in History of a Pleasure Seeker has reinvented himself as the French Vicomte Pierre de Barol, a skilled furniture maker in South Africa. Having aged several years, he is softer in the middle and his wife, Stacey, has curbed his dalliances. But the couple's happy-ever-after is running out. Their furniture company is facing financial ruin, so husband and wife devise a gambit to furnish the home of the insufferable Johannesburg aristocrat Percy Shabrill--for a hefty down payment and at no cost to themselves. In a small coup, Piet befriends two of Percy's Native servants, Luvo and Ntsina, who lead him deep into Bantu land in search of free wood.
Richard Mason sets his second Piet Barol novel in 1914, with the previous year's Natives Land Act in full force, a significant piece of Apartheid legislation fueling prejudice among the country's inhabitants. His prose is as amiable and elegant as ever, but readers eager for newly salacious escapades may wish to brace themselves for a weightier variety of provocativeness. The three press into the woods until they reach Ntsina's Xhosa village, where stakes climb as high as the ancient mahoganies when Piet schemes to snatch trees sacred to the Xhosa people.
Mason writes with a keen, unflinching style and indicts white supremacy as the pervasive malady it is. Piet's fortunes may take many unexpected turns, but readers in Mason's hands can rest assured that they'll experience more than one stroke of good luck. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness