Turning Wheels (1937) by Stuart Cloete

Book Review by Sylvia D. Between 1835 and the early 1840s some twelve to fourteen thousand Boers (Dutch/Afrikaans for “farmers”) who were descended from settlers who had come from western Europe (mainly from the Netherlands and north-west Germany and Huguenots from France) to settle in Cape Colony, migrated eastward and north-eastward – the Great Trek. It was this mass movement of settlers that eventually saw the establishment of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The voortrekkers, as they were known, were seeking to escape British control and were in search of new land. The family of Stuart Cloete (1897-1976 and pronounced “Clooty”) had settled in the Cape in 1652 and he was able to draw on the writings of his great-grandfather to write a novel about the Great Trek entitled Turning Wheels.