The nurse pointed at the long funeral procession coming down the slopes of the Drakensberg. "We are dying," she said. For the past 30 years Me Makaoe had been riding up into the highlands on her Basotho pony, to treat the sick. The villagers trusted her, she had grown up with them, and they wanted her to be the one who tested them for HIV.

<i>The Heart of Redness</i> is a history book, a rural comedy, an environmental treatise, a cultural manual, and a love story.