The idea for this book came to me while I was teaching at Ixopo High School in the Natal Midlands. The end of Apartheid was imminent and we knew schools would soon become desegregated. I wrote this in anticipation of that event, imagining the first black student to enrol in an all-white boarding school. In it I also describe my own search for God as a teenager. I didn't choose the name; it was chosen by my editor when she refused the title I wanted - A ( ) Black came to school today, sorry, sorry… as being too provocative, which I suppose, at the time, it was - although I must acknowledge her courage in publishing the book of which one reviewer said: "You will either like this book or hate it, but you must read it. It should be compulsory reading for every teenager in South African Schools."
Homeward Bound was BookChat Southern African Children's Book of the Year, and short listed for the MNET Award, 1991.