Synopsis
Reflections
By Justine Kaiyler
Synopsis
Length: approx 120,000 words. Complete manuscript ready for publisher or agent consideration.
Set in South Africa and Chicago, Reflections is the story of three families from three continents brought together because of the discovery of a smelly, ugly cactus-like plant in the Kalahari, the Hoodia Gordonii, that the traditional San bushmen call ‘xhoba’ and use to control appetite while on hunts. (You may recognize the name, hoodia, from the natural health and diet control promotions happening right now.) An American company, Ridgeway Pharmaceuticals, is in danger of implosion due to the deaths of teenage girls who took a chemically created weight-loss pill manufactured by the company. Pete Donahue, the ‘bad seed’ cousin of CEO Lachlan Ridgeway, is working in South Africa on a botanical audit and ‘finds’ this plant sample that he suspects will be of interest to Cousin Lachie.
Lachlan receives a mysterious package from Pete and jets to Johannesburg to find out more about the plant. There he reconnects with an old rival from Harvard Law School, Cassandra O’Shea, an Australian ex-pat social justice lawyer. Lachlan’s focus is split between getting the hoodia back to his research lab in Chicago to save his company, and his pursuit of Cassandra. He leaves, smuggling the plant out of the country in his corporate jet.
Meanwhile, the San women have seen Pete collecting their plants, and tribal elder Ras!hidi sends word to his grandson Minkah, estranged from the family for many years in Johannesburg, asking him for help. Minkah, a journalist in post-apartheid Johannesburg, and his white South African wife, Aibhlin, travel back to the tribe in the western Kalahari to find out more. Aibhlin is Cassandra’s brother’s AIDS nurse when he is in the Jo’burg hospital, and suggests to her husband that they get advice from her.
After getting the research going, Lachlan is drawn back to South Africa to see Cassandra again, but is stopped from entering the country because of his smuggling activities, and is sent packing. As a result, Cassandra is stood up and sees this as a second abandonment by Lachlan. She decides that he isn’t worthy of her or the San people’s trust, and calls on a favor from a former Harvard classmate, Judge Doug Martin in Chicago, to issue an injunction against the company, preventing them from proceeding with research and development of the Hoodia compounds. Lachlan gets the legal papers when he gets home, and calls Cassandra to challenge her. She convinces Minkah to bring his grandfather to Johannesburg to go with them to America to confront Ridgeway in the ‘lion’s den’. The experiences of a Kalahari bushman in modern society, the hotels, airplanes and the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Chicago, are humorous elements of the story, reflecting the cavernous gap between the cultures.
The culminating scene is in the boardroom of Ridgeway Pharmaceuticals, where all the parties concerned gather on Thanksgiving morning. Lachlan’s estranged and ailing father has come to join him for Thanksgiving in Chicago and is at the meeting. They find out that Lachlan’s deceased favorite aunt, Jane Ridgeway, had encountered Ras!hidi during an expedition in the Kalahari many years earlier, revealing a connection between the families that had not been known before. Cassandra receives a call from Aibhlin that Cammeron has passed away from AIDS complications; she is devastated. Lachlan comforts her, and says it will all work out, he has a plan. He meets with his advisors from the company, including his father, and finds out his father is dying. He has the determination at that point to do what he thinks will be a win-win for all concerned and takes that back to the boardroom. The offer is, in exchange for a long license of the hoodia, that Ridgeway will build a research facility in the Kalahari where the materials will be developed, and establish the Cammeron O’Shea Hospital and AIDS Clinic. The local knowledge will be part of the research activity, and the tribe and the company will share the profits equally.
Minkah agrees to the terms. The Lachlan and Cassandra potential relationship is back on track. All go back to Lachlan’s place for the Thanksgiving meal.
In the epilogue, twelve years later, a group gathers in the desert to conduct the initiation ceremony for Minkah’s son, Xhobadon. The spirits of Ras!hidi and Cammeron are remembered, and Lachlan and Cassandra are present, man and wife, celebrating the continuation of the San people in this new hybrid of ancient and modern peoples.
For more information contact:
Jan Whitaker, jwhit@janwhitaker.com
Australia: 03 9705 9009
International: +613 9705 9009