SOURCE: "An Improbable Love," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 29, 1993, pp. 3, 8.

In the following review, Major draws parallels between some of the features in Cape of Storms: the First Life of Adamastor and several other tales and myths.

In André Brink's novella, Cape of Storms, one day near the end of the 16th Century, a young white woman is left on a South African coastal beach by sailors—probably Portuguese—who had to make a hasty getaway after cheating and offending a nomadic tribe temporarily stopped near the beach. Why the woman was left and why she was on the ship in the first place, these things we never find out.

But really, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that the young tribal chief, T'kama, falls in love with this "bird" from the sea and she with him—that is, once she overcomes her fear of...