Wild Dog Running

By Alan Scholefield

A fresh start comes with new dangers…

The English men and women who settled South Africa in the 1820s yearned for a new life free of poverty and despair.

But what they found was a barren, cruel, violent frontier where, if starvation or murder didn’t kill you, the vicious roving packs of wild dogs would!

When his father is killed in a wagon accident, young John Caffre becomes the head of his family, only to discover that their role in this ‘new world’ is to act as buffers between established settlements and the natives.

To make matters worse, he clashes with the local, wealthy and powerful Vickers family.

While the dynasty’s father and son plot to take John’s land, he finds himself helplessly attracted to the Vickers’ daughter Charlotte.

To improve his prospects for marrying the girl of his dreams, he becomes embroiled in the illegal ivory trade, surrounding himself with Napoleonic veterans and English poachers who sold their morals years ago.

Will Charlotte still love John once she finds out what he’s been doing? Can he win the approval of her father without giving up his precious land?

And, when nature turns against them, can any of them survive in this foreign, beautiful, and often inhospitable land?

This is a story of the new settlers, dropped down into a strange land one hundred miles from a dangerous sea-coast with no good harbours, and six hundred miles from a city where they might be able to sell their crops.

Alan Scholefield was born in 1931 in Cape Town, South Africa. After leaving university he became a journalist and travelled widely in southern and central Africa, Europe, and America. He now lives in Hampshire with his wife and has three daughters. Most famous for his Macrae and Silver series, Scholefield has also written other novels, including Venom, which was made into a film in 1981.