We Were the Newmans

Set against the backdrop of an old ‘Whites Only’ South Africa, the UK, a post Pinochet Chile and a fledgling new South Africa, We Were The Newmans transcends time and place: it is a politically charged candid portrayal of love, loss, self-annihilation, revenge, redemption, and renewal. Not least, it is an intimate examination of the competing ideas of Old and New Testaments about justice, retribution, and forgiveness.

Ruth Newman, a seventeen-year-old in 1976 Jewish South Africa, is the sole survivor of a senseless family shooting. Her recovery with distant relatives in London gives her a new life full of hope and possibility. But it is not until twenty years later, when her career returns her to South Africa’s post-Apartheid’s Truth and Reconciliation Special Commission, that she is forced to confront herself and the true meaning and complexities of forgiveness.

EXCERPT. The shutter snaps shut and we are captured in Polaroid for eternity. Everything is almost exactly as it should have been, when this photo is taken. That dark-haired man in the green-orange shirt, that’s my father Ivor Newman. He had thick, bushy sideburns and shoulder-length black hair in those days, in the South African sixties. He is so handsome. I stand next to him in my rose-pink dress, only it doesn’t look like I remember it, as the colour has faded under the duress of the ageing photograph. I am only six years old but already I know I am beautiful, because my father says so. I love being near to my father. ‘Dancing eyes,’ my mother often tells me. ‘You have your father’s dancing eyes, my girl. Better make sure they don’t land you in trouble like they did your father.’ EXCERPT. COPYRIGHT. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED