This novel is set in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. Fourteen-year-old Lettie Venter is the narrator. Her Oupa Gideon, Vader, and older brother (Schalk) are off fighting when the British arrive and burn down their farm. Lettie, her Moeder, younger brother (Willem), and baby sister (Cecilia) are taken to an internment camp where they are housed in crowded tents. Lettie describes the deplorable conditions in which they live; people die of disease because of poor sanitation and malnutrition. One of the only positive aspects of Lettie’s time in the camp is the friendship she has with a young British guard, Thomas Maples.

In some ways, this is a coming-of-age novel. Lettie is an intelligent, curious child, always asking questions: “others thought me a pest with my questions.” Her mother describes her as “’helping with the chores when she can get away from her reading and studies. . . . Her mind works so hard you can watch it from the outside’” and her father teases her about her “’dozen questions and then silence.’”
Her experiences cause her to question what she has been taught. In the camp, she often thinks about her grandfather and father “speaking their favorite phrases, repeating their themes, the ones I’d heard for years, the ones I accepted without question.” Now she asks, “But if we have no dominion over our lives, Oupa, why strive to be righteous? If we have no part in our fate, what is the point?”

Her friendship with Maples has her learning more about the enemy. Maples forces Lettie to see the British as individuals who are not all like those who destroyed her home. Maples gifts her a copy of David Copperfield and she starts to think of the protagonist as a real person: “He was British, but the war had not been his fault.” She realizes she and David share similarities: “I liked David and felt . . . what? Akin. That’s the word” and “Our lives on the farm were hard in many ways. But not like David’s. And he seemed such a goodhearted little, doing his best, trying to see the good in people. I did not see how David could be an enemy of my country.” And she learns that Maples is as unhappy in the camp as she is; she comes to realize his “desire to back away from the savagery of the war.” The two years Lettie spends in the camp force her to grow up; at the end, she realizes she is “a different person – far closer to the woman I would become than to the little girl I had been.”

Because the narrator is young, there is much that she does not understand. The reader often sees the significance of statements that she does not. For instance, Lettie does not understand about her mother’s pregnancy. Comments that an adult might question, she dismisses; for example, Schalk comments that “’Oupa is hard on [Oom Sarel]. Never lets up. Doesn’t seem to matter what he does.’” This suggests an underlying animosity that explains much about Oom Sarel’s behaviour though Lettie does not come to understand until much later. Of course, having a young person as a narrator serves to emphasize the horrors of life in the camp.

I enjoy books that shed light on historical events. This one shines a spotlight on the Anglo-Boer war and the mistreatment of women and children during the conflict: “twenty-two thousand Boer children died in British concentration camps – more than the combined fatalities among soldiers on both sides. It wasn’t on the scale of the Holocaust, nor was it of genocidal intent, but it was nevertheless a twentieth-century atrocity – a war against children – that has been largely forgotten.”

The portrayal of the Boers is sometimes idealized. Arthur Conan Doyle is quoted at the beginning: “[The Boers] must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth” and it seems that Boling shares this opinion. Conan Doyle wrote about the Boers’ “dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism”; in the novel, Oupa, with his “immense faith” is the former and Vader, with his unrelenting behaviour even in defeat, is the latter. I appreciated that Maples tries to show Lettie that the Boers are not guiltless; they took land from the Zulus and fought wars: “’Oh . . . were [the natives] happy you showed up? Did they welcome you? I doubt it. See, we’re not so different.’” And anyone with knowledge of future events in South Africa will note the very telling comment at the end when a native woman is asked about her people and she replies, “’I don’t know . . . A beaten dog will someday bare its teeth.’”

This is a book I would recommend. It includes a young narrator (who may remind readers of Anne Frank, another intelligent writer-in-the-making) and shows her growing into an admirable woman. There are also other well-developed and memorable characters, Tante Hannah being one of my favourites. The book also highlights historical events probably not known to many people but events that should not be hidden.

Note: My review will be posted online (my blog, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Google+, Facebook, Twitter) on June 6.

In October 1899, the Dutch Afrikaner settlers in South Africa are brutally removed from their homes, their farms are burned to the ground and the women and children are placed in concentration camps. The men have gone off to fight the British whose interest in the lucrative gold mines and control of the region have driven thousands of soldiers to war. What is known as the Boer War lasted for three long harsh years. Through the eyes of 14 yr old Lettie, The Lost History of Stars narrates their unimaginable quarantine living in sparse tents with little food, water or medicine. Lettie forms an unlikely friendship with a young British soldier guarding the camp. He gives her a book by Dickens. Lettie’s love of reading and dreams of writing fill her with the strength she needs to help her mother and siblings through the daily battle of living. It is through the hopeful eyes of this young girl on the cusp of womanhood we learn the brutality of mankind against mankind. Her innocence and disbelief is so raw and honest that the pain is palpable. More than 100 years later, this history I knew little or nothing about is brought to life by this beautifully written work of historical fiction. As I read each chapter I fell deeper into the heart of Lettie’s sorrow, and her determination to remain hopeful. We are all looking up at the sky, the same stars - but cannot manage to peacefully share the same planet. It was happening then and it is happening now. Highly recommend this impassioned novel, you will learn from and love these characters long after the end.

This is why historical fiction is so important and I thank the author for this inspiring story. This is such a unique telling of the Boer War told from the viewpoint of a 14 year old Dutch Afrikaner. The story is, at times, horrifying, poignant and hopeful. I so admired this protagonist who really comes of age in a concentration camp.

While Aletta's father, grandfather and brother are off fighting the British, she is rounded up with her mother and younger siblings and taken from their home in South Africa to a concentration camp. Set during the Boer War, this book shows the horrible and outrageous conditions that the Afrikaner women and children were forced into.

This book was haunting. It read like non-fiction I know very little about the Boer War, and even less about the concentration camp conditions. I highly recommend this book, it is definitely a must read.

An absolute must read...As has been proven, history is destined to repeat itself. Although this historical novel takes place in an internment camp in South Africa during the Boer War, unfortunately the circumstances ring true today as people struggle to survive in refugee camps all around the world. Lettie, a 14 year old girl has been sent by the British Army to live in an internment camp with her mother and siblings while the men in her Afrikaner family are off fighting against the British. Despite extreme hardships Lettie does her best to keep going using intelligence, determination and pluckiness. Dave Boling has done a wonderful job of transporting the reader into the midst of the chaos of families separated and uprooted by war as they each try to survive.

The Lost History of Stars by Dave Boling is a powerful and shocking true story about The Second Anglo-Boer War during the early part of the 20th century in Africa.

Parts of the book were difficult for me to read as the horror of reality sets in. It's unfathomable the scads of women and children that were effected, mainly due to disease. It truly was a war in opposition to children and a true picture of what it's like when war comes to your door.

This is another book I'd recommend for older students to read. If our young generation aren't educated on these tribulations in history, they'll be forgotten.

I'm so glad I came across this book. I look ahead to reading more works by this author. Highly recommend this book to all.

5*****

I don't find this kind of historical fiction very compelling--I would rather read documentary sources than a thinly veiled fictionalization in which the author relies too heavily on the narrative to do the entire work of the book.

Thank you Net Galley for the free ARC.

Interesting topic that I knew little about. The British fought the Boers in chaotic war that ended up being one of the first instances of guerilla warfare. The Brits collected all women and children and interned them, while they sent the captured men to other countries. They burned the farms , poisoned wells and salted the fields to prevent resettlement (scorched earth policy). This is the story of the one of the families in the concentration camp.