Main Point Books--Corban Addison: The Garden of Burning Sand and Ru Freeman: On Sal Mal Lane

Corban Addison’s The Garden of Burning Sand tells of Zoe Fleming, a young,
idealistic American lawyer in Zambia devoted to combatting the epidemic of
child sexual assault in southern Africa. Zoe’s organization is called in to
help when an adolescent girl is brutally assaulted. A betrayal in her past
gives the girl’s plight a special resonance for Zoe, and she is determined to
find the perpetrator. As the investigation builds to a climax Zoe is forced to
radically reshape her assumptions about love, loyalty, family and especially,
the meaning of justice.

On Sal Mal
Lane is a heartrending novel set in
Sri Lanka in the years leading up to the Civil War.   Poised
between the past and the future, the innocence of the children—a beloved sister
and her overprotective siblings, a rejected son and his twin sisters, two very
different brothers—contrasts sharply with the petty prejudices of the adults
charged with their care. In Ru Freeman’s masterful hands, a story of what was lost to a country
and her people, becomes a resounding cry for reconciliation. On Sal Mal Lane is
also our June Book Group pick.