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The heroines Milla and Agaat, strong female characters, rise above societal expectations and practices in South Africa while affirming the good of its heritage and while celebrating and preserving its extraordinary varieties of nature. Four voices, many forms of writing from narrative to stream-of-consciousness prose poems, to realist details make this a literary work. Reading the story is like listening to its breathing or heartbeats, long passages suddenly rapidly paced followed by a brief lull. How is the patient or character doing? Literally, caring for Grootmoedersdrift farm and for its ill people and animals is part of the setting. Those two protagonists do that extraordinarily well and intelligently, forming almost their own coterie. A favorite word of Milla is her moieties, oppositions within herself that constitute herself; so while carrying on the instructive and managing sides very well, her difficult marriage to Jak is not a model. Since the story is mostly told by Milla and is often about Agaat--in narration and diaries and in the Epilogue by Agaat whose version Milla's son Jakkie retells word for word--only a few men like Milla's father and the Dutch Reformed Church's dominee are pleasantly depicted. With a catalogue of details, the author/Milla recreates that part of the world under the heavens, all its moieties part of it.