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Helga Divin, the matriarch of a prominent white family from Durban in Kwa Zulu-Natal, South Africa, lies dying in the splendid London mansion of her second husband, the unscrupulous industrialist Arnold Miro.

Her children Danny and Bridget, both well established in Boston, rush to her side where they quickly realize that Arnold, in addition to mistreating their mother, has begun to claim as his own a priceless collection of African artifacts that their dead father spent a lifetime assembling and chronicling.

The collection's most important pieces are a pair of majestic ivory tusks that were once owned by King Shaka, founder of the Zulu nation and a major symbolic figure in modern South Africa. Their father's account of the origins and provenance of the tusks – how, after a long and complicated journey, they had finally come into his possession – was a story often told and long accepted.

As Danny and Bridget move to thwart what they see as an unforgivable theft of their family heirlooms, they find themselves having to face instead the truth about their father's stories, the true ownership of this unique collection of Africana, and long held beliefs about their own past and their country's history.

After many years away, the two return home to Durban to finish what they started in London. Amid the turbulence of the "new" South Africa, and against the backdrop of dramatic changes in the lives of old family friends' and former domestic servants, Danny and Bridget come face-to-face with the reality that much of what they always thought to be true is instead as fragile and as suspect as the story of King Shaka and his ivory tusks.

Read an interview with the author about this book.

Read the first book in the saga:

David Schmahmann's stunning debut novel is an accomplished, arresting tale of forbidden love during apartheid in South Africa. At once a compelling love story and a powerful commentary on life amidst political and social turmoil, Empire Settings announces the arrival of a significant new literary talent.

Danny Devin is a young white man in South Africa who enters into an illicit romance with a young, mixed race schoolgirl, the daughter of black domestic servant. When social constraints force Danny to end the romance, he travels to America with the hopes of starting a new life. There he meets Tesseba, a curious and trusting artist who takes him in and marries him to save him from deportation. The two build a life together, but Danny continues to be plagued by a growing sense of loss. Twenty years later, Danny returns to a "new" South Africa in the hopes of saving a family fortune and finding the girl he has never forgotten.

In precise yet lyrical prose, David Schmahmann spins a heart-wrenching tale that reveals the subtle, yet powerful intersection of politics and individual choice, and proves that nothing is ever only black and white.