Cara and Grace are two young women. Cara is a medical doctor who has an exciting career, a loving marriage and a beautiful six-month-old son, Noah. Grace is a teenage girl, young, fit and talented, embarking on all that life has to offer her. When each one of them is devastated by personal tragedy, neither one knows how to rebuild their own life.
But when Grace has the idea, inspired by the Reach for a Dream foundation, to cycle across South Africa from Durban back to her home city of Cape Town, Cara appears to be the most qualified companion for her. Not only is she the most qualified, but the two of them have an instant connection which is buoyed by a shared love for poetry and the written word, as well as the recognition that each of them, although laid low by circumstances, is striving towards self-realisation and resilience, with the support of the other.
‘Miles to Go’ is a story about the journey that these companions take – a journey of many physical miles but also one that is filled with many emotional milestones as they embark on their journey back to wholeness. It is filled with the struggles and fears, tears and more than a little laughter, of two young women who are trying to overcome their loss and find their way back to life, in defiance of the hands that they have been dealt.
Miles to Go by Cathy Donald
Cathy Donald was born and educated in Gqeberha / Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. From an early age she loved writing stories, and later became involved in speech and drama, as well as script writing for dramatic productions and musicals. Her career path, however, led her in a different direction and she qualified as a medical doctor at the University of the Witwatersrand, subsequently working in rural hospitals as well as urban private practices. Since her children have become adults, she has again been able to indulge her passion for words and stories.
She has written and published five novels over the past eight years; "The Reluctant Cuckoo" (2016), "Miles to Go" (2018) "The Silence of the Shadows" (2020) “Breathless” (2022) and “The First Stone” (2023)
In 2022, her novel “The Silence of the Shadows” was awarded the Jury prize at the Milan International Literary Awards.She lives in Somerset West with her husband, Roy, and has three adult children.
All her novels celebrate family and friendship and the life-affirming values that mean so much to her. Most are set in South Africa and handle issues that are relevant both to fellow South Africans and to the world at large.
