The Price of Principles by Lauri Kubuitsile
Excerpt:
“I’m going to finish my two thousand this weekend, closing the second account. B, we need the money for the baby. I need to take care of us.”
Bontle couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I’ve only got seven hundred to give her. That leaves a shortage of 379.”
“I can help her patch it up. Me and your dad can plant 379 in two weekends if we’re serious.”
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“Where are you getting all of those saplings?”
“You know that guy I built the swan bed for?”
“The South African?” she asked.
“Yes, that one,” he said, sitting down next to her. “He’s got about two hundred saplings which he said are mine if I want them. I just need to collect them. He’s finished his quota.”
“And the other 179? Mod, this is not a small thing. My mother will be banished.”
Lauri Kubuitsile is a two-time winner of The Golden Baobab Prize for African children’s writing, the winner of the Botswana Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture’s Botswerere Prize for Creative Writing, and a finalist for the 2011 Caine Prize, among others. She has more than 30 books published for a range of age groups and her short stories are published around the world. Her historical novel, The Scattering (Penguin 2016), won Best International Fiction Book 2017 at the Sharjah International Book and was recommended by the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction (UK) 2017. The North American rights have been bought by Waveland Press (USA). Her second historical novel But Deliver Us from Evil was published by Penguin in May 2019. It was long-listed for the 2020 NOMMO award. In May this year, her legal thriller/romance, Revelations, was published by Love Africa Press.
She lives happily in a village in Botswana with her daughter, grandson, three dogs and two cats.
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