There are Ants in My Sugar

This is the warm hearted, engaging and humorous account of Annica Foxcroft's exile to a pondokkie in the country, when unexpected financial hardship overtook her family during the 1960s.Annica is a sassy young woman to whom the city chic of Johannesburg, and the dire warnings of her decorator friend Harry, still cling like French perfume, as she is dumped unceremoniously on a plot in the dark, landing on a pile of blackjacks. She has to adapt and make a home for her baby daughter and aging husband amidst boreholes, long drops and Aga stoves.She comes to terms with her neighbours, Joshua, a practising Sangoma, and Ben, a Jewish pig farmer; is educated in the ways of the Practical by her indomitable maid May; and comes of age through her determined efforts to create things of beauty amidst the khakibos - a lawn and poetry. She even restores the family fortune by engaging in a lucrative and uniquely South African venture.