Why on earth did J.W. Redecker, Helge's great-grandfather, emigrate from Germany in 1867 to this last most inhospitable corner of the African continent that was not yet a colony? What motivated her father, H. Staby, to leave Germany in 1929, hoping to find a better life in the same now post-colonial country, South-West Africa? In "Beyond Fences," her first book, the author, now a US citizen, searches for her identity as a fourth generation descendant of Redecker. This identity was forged in the crucible of not only the religious and political beliefs of the past century that bear many parallels to the history of the US, but also by the givens of the country's geography and the clashes of different peoples and cultures. Teaching at a mission school where every "non-white" tribe of South-West Africa was represented in the tumultuous times of the sixties, when the wave for independence washes over sub-Saharan Africa, turns out to be a humanizing experience. Almost forty years later she looks back, discovering not only letters and diaries, but also all the enduring gains and losses of life. One can almost smell the rain in this delightful memoir of growing up in an important but overlooked period in Namibian history. Beyond Fences is more than a tale of coming of age. It provides important insights into the ruptures and frictions in White Namibian society. - Robert J. Gordon, Professor of Anthropology at the Universities of Vermont and the Free State, S.A.