Toni Strasburg

Holding the Fort

Toni Strasburg

‘I always tried to be cheerful when I saw my mother. I never told her that Frances was sad and weepy and wouldn’t eat, and that Keith was clingy and woke me several times a night, or that Pat was withdrawn and hard to approach.’ Activists Rusty and Hilda Bernstein were arrested with many other South Africans following the 1960 State of Emergency and held for three months without trial. Toni, their eldest, at sixteen was left to look after her three younger siblings and was their only child allowed to visit them in jail. Hilda kept a diary of her time in detention, filled with letters to the children, drawings for the younger siblings, poems, plays and menus she made to keep her fellow detainees entertained. Years later, Toni pieces together her mother’s diary, snippets from her father's writing and her own recollection, trying to make sense of this tumultuous time. 'Holding the Fort' is the heart-breaking story of a family separated by unjust laws.

Fractured Lives

Toni Strasburg

Life at boarding school is not all diets, dresses and dances, as Trinity Luhabe discovers when her parents move overseas for a term. She has hardly settled into Sisulu House when she finds herself caught up in the most unexpected love triangle of her life. Zach is the school sports hero, while James is different to anyone shes ever met. One of them wants to control her the other holds the key to an old secret that has been buried for a very long time. Will Trinity figure out who to trust before its too late?