A giant in hiding - Lawrence G. Green

First Edition 1970

This is Lawrence Greens finest work and a fitting climax to his long career as a best-selling author. It tells the full life story of Frank Wightman, a very small man of brilliant intellect who sought a hiding-place away from the stares of the crowd.

It took Wightman many years to find his sanctuary on a South African lagoon. His previous adventures are vividly described but the main theme of this memorable book is his conquest of loneliness during more than twenty years alone on board his little yawl Wylo. This is a unique episode such as no South African writer has ever touched on before. It is doubtful whether anyone ever came closer to nature at the Cape than Frank Wightman.

Lawrence Green presents an epic of human endurance, a triumph of philosophy and the human spirit. He takes you into a world of wild life so real that every sound is heard, every scene rises before you; indeed Lawrence Greens writing is so sensitive that you can almost feel the lagoon moving beneath you.

Frank Wightman ranks with the American naturalist philosopher Thoreau, whose work is still read after more than a century. Many readers may well form the opinion that Wightmans achievements surpassed those of Thoreau.