In most novels, the central premise of the book is that the main character(s) goes on a journey. Usually, that journey is at least partly experienced within the character – so spiritual, emotional, intellectual. In Burning Embers, both of the main characters, Coral and Rafe, go on such a journey. For Rafe, the journey is about letting go of the past, and finding the courage to trust another. For Coral, the journey is very much one of girl to woman.

At the start of the book Coral is a woman of her era (the 1970s). She is feisty and determined. She is not afraid to hold her own with a man and demand that a relationship be on an equal footing. She has a career of her own (freelance photographer). She has already been engaged, so is no stranger to the world of relationships. She is confident enough to feel she can take the helm in running her father’s plantation, Mpingo. And yet, despite her outward appearance of being a grown woman – strong, independent, self-assured, worldly – she is in so many ways immature and naive. She is overwhelmed by the attraction and passion that emerges within her when in Rafe’s company. She knows nothing of Rafe’s world: of nightclubs and sensuous dancing and womanising. She is quick to emotional outbursts and to judgement, and she is slow to trust and to open herself up to really loving.

Author MJ Croan said, ‘Maturity is when your world opens up and you realise that you are not the centre of it.’ This is very much the case for Coral in the book. Although her life has not been without pain (her parents’ divorce; her fiancé’s betrayal), she has in many ways had a charmed existence. She has been cared for, cosseted, comfortable. And now, through the course of the book, she is taken out of that safe (but stifling) lifestyle and forced, through her blossoming love for Rafe, to grow up. For Coral, womanhood means learning about and relaxing into her sexuality; making her own decisions from a place of calm, considered reflection; taking responsibility for her actions; and understanding that loving another in fact means more than being loved herself, and that love is what makes her the best person she can be.

Various factors through the book shape Coral’s development, but the single most important one is that she grows to care for Rafe more than anything else – more than being right, or scoring points, or pleasing others who have an opinion on their relationship. As film director John MacNaughton put it, ‘Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.’ At the end of the book, Coral has reached the point where she’ll put aside everything that is holding her back and go to her love, swallow her pride, forgive the past and say, ‘I love you, just as you are.’ And it’s that maturity she’s now reached that enables her to pull Rafe back from the brink of death. To paraphrase ‘Invictus’, she is the master of her fate; she is the captain of her soul.