The Hidden Star

Eleven-year-old Nolitye lives in Phola, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, where children have been mysteriously disappearing. Her best friends are Bheki - overweight and timid - and bespectacled Four Eyes, who leaves the Spoilers, a gang under the leadership of Rotten Nellie. At first, the story centres on the threesome's efforts to survive victimisation at the hands of Four Eyes' former gang. But when Nolitye picks up a magic stone, the intrigue shifts to a magical realm that co-exists with ours. It soon becomes clear that Nolitye, who has always taken comfort in her granny's words, "you mess with a woman, you mess with a rock", is the new seeker for the five pieces of the magic stone which, when restored, will heal communities and bring them together again. In a dream, Nolitye learns that her father, once a healer and believed to have died in a mining accident, is being held captive in the underworld and that the woman whom she believes to be her mother is really a witch in the service of Ncitjana, the Evil One. Nolitye then embarks on a quest to find the missing pieces of the stone and to rescue her parents.