The Map of Bones

Olifantshoek, 1688. Huguenot refugee Suzanne Joubert reaches the Cape of Good Hope after escaping persecution in France. She intends to discover what happened to her cousin Louise Reydon-Joubert, the pirate captain who disappeared in southern Africa decades earlier, but the settlement’s silences conceal violence, exploitation and competing versions of the family past.

Franschhoek, 1862. Isabelle Joubert Lepard follows the same trail, determined to restore forgotten women to the historical record. Her investigation reveals that inherited property, colonial power and buried crimes still threaten the living. The final volume joins Huguenot migration to the Dutch and British Cape Colony, presenting genealogy as a contested archive shaped by those able to record, suppress or recover a story.