Isaiah’s Mountain

May 1901. Jo stands alone, ready to meet her fate, as British soldiers come thundering up the dusty track of her farm. She has not raised a white flag, it is pointless; the British are burning homesteads to the ground. Choked by the acrid smell of farmlands and livestock, blazing in the valley, Jo struggles to find her voice and the words she needs to save her home.

A strange twist of events transports Jo back to a time when, as a young teacher in the tiny Karoo town of Kweek Valley, she was drawn into the troubled world of a boy named Lukas Bester. A time past when nothing was as simple as it seemed and the truth lay silent and festering beneath the surface of the pious community. A time when she was Joanna Shepherd, an entirely different person…

If she is to survive, Jo has to find the words which uncover the truth as she navigates her way through grief, betrayal and the violence of war.

Ceri Leigh Berry has a degree in education with majors in art, English and maths. She worked as a special needs teacher before starting her own family. She is mother to three exceptionally brilliant young adults and lives in South Africa, between Gauteng and the Western Cape, surrounded by dogs and horses. She spends as much time as possible in the Karoo town of Prince Albert where she finds inspiration in the harsh landscape and slows down enough to write from dawn to dusk. She loves nature, art, history, food and travel but most of all loves storytelling. Ceri has been quietly writing poetry and stories since she can remember. Isaiah’s Mountain is her first novel.